Soulmates
by karebear
Summary: "I was born to tell you I love you." A deeper exploration of Anders and Hawke.
1. You Jump, I Jump

Title: Soulmates  
><span>Author<span>: karebear  
><span>Rating<span>: T  
><span>Characters<span>: Anders, (female mage) Hawke  
><span>Standard Disclaimer (Dragon Age)<span>: I don't own these characters or the world they inhabit. Bioware built the sandbox. I just play in it.  
><span>Summary:<span> Connected oneshots. A deeper exploration of Anders and Hawke.

Notes: So I'll be honest here... when I write Anders, I completely ignore Justice - he just doesn't exist in my world because my headcanon Anders is quite fucked up enough psychologically without being possessed. If you want Justice to be a part of this story, I shouldn't ever directly contradict the canon, but I'll never mention possession either. On purpose. Anders' many issues will manifest in other ways (And Hawke's got drama of her own).

* * *

><p>She teases.<p>

He laughs nervously, tells her not to get involved with him, because _it will not end well_, and she sees the flash of genuine fear in his eyes, and she feels the familiar uncertainty kick back in, threading through her heartbeat.

She looks away, kicks at the ground. She wants to tell him that she didn't mean it, but that's not true, she _did_, she wants him, she wants... something. Connection.

She never thought she'd ever meet someone who understands what her life is. Apostate.

They live a life _alone_, layers of secrets and shields and fear, never _ever_ trusting, always ready to run.

She has a family, but even there, even with them, she is alone.

Bethany... Bethany was her baby sister, she couldn't talk to her honestly about any of her real fears. She knows her father had told her things that Bethany never knew, trusting her to be strong enough to take care of the littler ones in case anything ever happened. He wanted her to _understand_ why she needed to run, why _he_ ran, why her life is the way it is.

Her father is dead now, and so is Bethany.

She has a brother, and a mother, but they can't know the things she needs the way Daddy did. It's not their fault - they can't help _not_ being mages any more than she can help being one. In their own ways, they protect her. She knows she's _lucky_, that most families would have abandoned her to the Circle when she was seven or eight years old and been happy to do it.

The _idea_ of the Circle haunts her nightmares, she knows she'd rather _die_ than go there.

Except there's still the part of her that _isn't sure_, the whispering conversations with Bethany in the night: maybe it's not _really_ that bad, surely it can't be _worse_ than never knowing, every night as you try to fall asleep, if tomorrow is the day they come for you.

She'd _almost_ wanted to believe it, until the templars killed her father.

Cold, merciless, slicing him down while she watched, hidden, frozen with fear (just like he taught her - hide, don't fight, _no matter what_.)

If they had seen her, she would have died with him in that field.

He never did anything _wrong_, except be born a mage.

She's guilty of the same crime.

And so is the man in front of her now, with the smile that masks his real feelings and she _gets that_. His eyes flicker dark with rage against a world that condemns them both.

He'd lost a good friend to the templars' righteous need for _control_, just like she'd lost her father.

But he _heals people_, doesn't he?

Somehow still, he trusts the world enough to help the people nobody else cares about.

And they fought the templars and they're still here, still alive, still breathing, and her heart is racing and she feels like she's one step away from crying because _this shouldn't be possible_.

She is pulsing with restless energy, and anger still crashing in waves from the fight, and survival instinct still screaming at her to run, and _how is it that he seems so calm_?

"Don't get involved."

But she's _already_ involved, damn it.


	2. The Danger Zone

**Note:** the quote in the main summary: "I was born to tell you I love you" comes from the Secondhand Serenade song "Your Call" - it's the story theme.

* * *

><p>"I'd always heard joining the Grey Wardens was for life," she murmurs, and a tiny smile quirks and the corner of his lip. She immediately finds herself returning the expression. She relaxes, leaning against one of the wooden beams miraculously holding up his Darktown shack.<p>

"Yes, well," he counters. "They say the same about the Circle. I don't take it especially well when people try to keep me locked up."

She understands this, she'd _said_ it, to that woman Lirene ("I can hardly blame him."), yet still, alarm bells scream at the back of her mind. He is dangerous.

She didn't know what she was thinking... that he was like her? That he'd had a family too, that he'd lived his _whole life_ like this, hiding, lying?

But he's a fugitive.

Not _just_ an apostate, but a runaway.

"Are they looking for you?" she whispers.

She thinks she can feel her pulse growing heavier, louder in her ears.

"Not specifically," he hedges. "I left the Wardens on... reasonably good terms. The Commander is a... friend. They won't be hunting me."

Her eyes narrow. It's not the Wardens she's particularly worried about. The Wardens have no reason to be interested in her.

"And the templars?" she prompts.

He breathes a heavy sigh, won't meet her eyes. She notices the way his fingers begin to twitch, he shifts his body weight.

She recognizes the movements. A caged animal, pacing. Ready to run.

"Hawke, you know as well as I do how... vigilant the templars in this city are."

She nods.

They've been asking questions, trying to track her down.

Athenril throws them off the trail, somehow, she doesn't ask, but her time will run out, one day.

Is it today? Tomorrow? They'll come for her, just like they came for Daddy.

She'll die, just like Bethany is dead.

She forces herself to breathe. Slow and steady. In and out.

She watches Anders watching her, out of the corner of her eye, but he makes no move toward her, says nothing. He must know how she would respond, in this state, to any unexpected touch. He must understand that she already _knows_ the danger, he need not say it out loud.

"They are not hunting me specifically," he tells her, when she has settled once more. His voice is quiet, somehow soothing, despite the words. "Just as they are not hunting you. I ran from _Ferelden's_ Circle. They have no reason to seek me here. And Kirkwall's templars will not know me."

But still, people know what he is, where to find him... "There's a bounty on mages," she protests. "And the people here... they're desperate enough to _need_ that money, they won't care about you! Do you think they'll risk dying when just handing you over to the Knight Commander will give them enough to feed their family for a week?"

"Lirene keeps me safe enough," he assures her. "As Athenril guards you."

"How did you..."

"The name 'Hawke' is on many lips these days," he quotes the dwarf. "I listen. You don't think I've stayed free by ignoring what's going on around me?"

No. There's lots of things you can do to stay free, but that's not one of them.

"They'll crack down harder, after what happened in the Chantry," he warns.

_After what happened_, she thinks. _After what_ we _did_.

They had nothing on her before... no reason to want her, beyond casual suspicion, but _now_... If she's caught...

She's worried about _him_ being a fugitive? She's _killed_ templars now, not to mention the long _lists_ of laws she's broken under Athenril's employ. She'd be _lucky_ to get away with simply being locked up in the Circle.

And she knows she's not that lucky.


	3. The Kids Aren't Alright

The boy claims to be fifteen, but looks like he's twelve.

He stammers something about his mother being killed by the darkspawn in Ferelden, about trying to feed his younger siblings. He looks like he might cry. He looks terrified, and from the way he keeps sneaking glances at her before returning his gaze to his boots (or maybe it's the dead Coterie all around them that he's looking at), she isn't sure what he's more afraid of: that rival gang, or her.

"_Please_," he begs her. "Athenril said this is my last chance. If you don't help me, we'll be on the streets with _nothing_."

"Your problem, kid. Not mine."

She flips him a couple of silvers and begins the long walk back to Hightown.

"You didn't have to do that," Anders tells her harshly.

She stops. She didn't even know he was following her.

She swallows hard. _Idiot!_ She has got to pay more attention. What if it was Coterie, holding back for more of Athenril's gang? What if it was templars?

"I didn't have to... Are you stupid?" she spits. "The kid'll be on the streets with a hundred other kids. He'll figure something out. You know what happens to _me_ if I go against Athenril?"

"He's _fifteen!_"

"I know." Her voice is quiet now, and... is it shaking a little?

She notices Anders fingers twitching a little, reaching out for her. But he stops himself.

She meets his eyes.

"He's not cut out for this kind of thing anyway. He wouldn't survive it." Her voice is hard, and she takes a deep breath, remembering other things Anders said...

_"You look... something. Like... even if you don't agree with me, you'll be honest."_

She shouldn't tell him this, she shouldn't expose her vulnerabilities to anyone, _ever_...

But hiding _everything_, all the time... it's exhausting. And what he knows already is more than enough to destroy her if that's what he wanted to do.

And she's got the same knowledge about him.

"When I was fifteen I watched the templars slaughter my father," she tells him in a rush, as though if the words spill out quick enough they won't bring back the memories. _That's_ never worked, but she presses ahead. "_I ran away_, because he _told_ me to, he made me. He pushed me away while he was _dying_, to save my life. And suddenly I was responsible for taking care of my family. Carver and... and Bethany. Do you think there're many jobs available for a fifteen-year-old apostate, Anders? Trust me. I did that kid a favor."

For once, Anders isn't moving at all, not tapping his foot or letting some random object play between his fingers. He barely seems to be breathing.

"I... I'm sorry," he whispers.

When _he_ was fifteen he spent two months in a cell, two months of constant hunger and cold and pain, blocked from the Fade, drifting in and out of sleep, never knowing when the templars would decide to entertain themselves by beating him into unconsciousness.

Two months was easy. Two months was nothing compared to what came later.

He'd thought his life was the worst it ever got.

"When I looked at that kid, all I could see was Carver," Hawke admits.

"What, your prick of a brother?"

He's trying to make her smile, and it works. He grins. "Come on," he tells her. "Go get your coin from the elf bitch, and we can go to the Hanged Man. You can buy."

Because he's learned, (_they've learned_, he corrects... _when did "they" happen?_) that sometimes pretending everything's alright is the only way to make it close enough to true to be survivable.

And when that doesn't work, the alcohol helps.


	4. Carry On, Wayward Son

The alienage is one of the safest places for them to wander, because the templars join most of the other humans in Kirkwall in avoiding it as much as possible.

Merrill isn't good at hosting guests, which is perfectly fine with both Hawke and Anders.

He's never learned how to coexist with a world that hates him, that's why he sticks to Darktown, helping people honestly, not having to hide who he is or how he feels. He doesn't trust himself in Hightown, in polite company.

She's always chafed when her mother tried to force her to learn the manners and politics that were supposed to come with her noble lineage. Her mother may have once been Kirkwall nobility, but she's _not_ an Amell, she's a Hawke: a Ferelden farmer, a Lowtown criminal, an _apostate_. Let her mother take the estate if she wants it, she'll stay where she belongs.

When they're here, they don't worry about small talk. When they talk at all, it's usually trying to answer any of Merrill's hundreds of incessant questions about Kirkwall and human culture. She really is like a little kid.

But Anders understands, because he grew up locked in a tower, and he could usually fake his way through most conversations with the knowledge he picked up in the books he read voraciously, but there are certain things about city life that you can only learn through experience. Every time he was in Denerim, there was always that feeling of _not-belonging_, not understanding. He was sure everyone could see his awkwardness. Part of him wonders if that inability to blend in is what led the templars to him, so easily, every time.

In Kirkwall, he's a little bit better. He's older now, with a place of his own, able to pause and take a breath every now and then. He has _goals_ and purpose now, people he cares about and who care about him.

But he's never stopped looking over his shoulder.

Which is why when he glimpses the too-familiar templar armor through the Merrill's slightly-open front door, his freezes.

Hawke places a hand gently on his forearm, frowns a question. He shrugs her off.

The conversation outside is not loud, but they can hear scattered phrases floating through the air. Hawke hears "offer your son mercy if he turns himself in."

"Sure," Anders mutters. "They'll beat him until he _wishes_ he was dead instead of killing him outright."

Hawke stops trying to eavesdrop on the templar outside and turns back to him.

It's the first time he's said anything at all about his experiences in the Circle. She'd gotten the impression they weren't happy ones, but the pure hatred lurking in his tone shakes her.

"Would they really?" she asks.

"What?" Anders asks, completely unaware that she's been listening to his side remarks. He's still not used to anyone hearing him when he talks to himself.

"Beat him until he wishes he's dead?"

And he immediately understands the question she's not _quite_ asking.

It's not about this elven boy at all, but about _her_. What's waiting for her if the templars ever catch up, the day her luck runs out?

"No," he admits. "Well... _probably_ not. Not right away. It's not the smart way to play it. They're gonna want to convince the mages to come to them, so they'll probably be outrageously _nice_ at first, actually. But they'll watch him extra closely, waiting for an excuse. Or maybe they'll just kick him around a little, a _warning_."

"Is that what happened to you?" she asks quietly.

His eyes are still dark, his voice hard.

"This isn't the first time I've run, Hawke. It's just the first time I _got away_. I got _lucky_, with the Blight, the Wardens... a lot of confusion in the Circle itself, too. I know I'm out of chances. This kid... maybe he's still got a few." He kicks idly at the base of the wall, and if Merrill even notices, she doesn't say anything. "But then again, maybe not," he adds, very quietly. "If they'd make a Harrowed mage Tranquil... I can't predict what they'll do. Kirkwall is _not_ Ferelden."

Kirkwall is not Ferelden, and Ferelden was bad enough.

Hawke remembers her father, bleeding out in the grass as she hid in the nearby brush, biting her lip to keep from crying out. The memory won't leave her, and Anders is clearly haunted by memories of his own.

The templar eventually stalks off, apparently convinced enough for now that the elven woman is ignorant of her son's whereabouts.

"Merrill, it might be best for you to lay low for a while," Anders advises.

It would be smart for _all of them_ to lie low, but he can't leave this woman standing there, lost and confused.

And part of him cannot walk away without _talking_ to her, this mother who stands her ground against a templar and refuses to admit to hiding her son.

Until he met Hawke, he never knew there were people who did this, hid their kids from the Chantry instead of turning them over without a word of protest. His long-buried resentment toward his own family bubbles toward the surface. There are _so many_ people he's angry at.

He reaches for Hawke's hand, and she takes it, smiles up at him.

He smiles back, reassured by her presence, a stabilizing force anchoring him to the world, and she doesn't have the _slightest clue_ how much he needs it. Would it scare her away if she did know?

"Come on," he says. "Let's go see if we can get to this kid before the templars do."


	5. Your First Lesson In Shared Dreaming

"My whole life, it was, 'I'll love you and protect you.' Then a few bad dreams, and suddenly it's 'off to the templars!'"

Anders manages not to say something sharp and sarcastic in response, but the comment cuts deep with its truth. It's how it is for all of them.

He remembers blood in his mouth after a templar's backhand, bruises on his arm where their armored fingers dug deep into his flesh, his sister fighting and crying, his mother watching with cold hostility. The first time he ever really _saw_ a templar, and it resulted in blood and bruises. Figures. Somebody smarter than him might have taken it as a warning. But he shakes his head, and actually smiles. He'll _never_ stop fighting them.

And his hands clench into fists as the thought of Karl springs to his mind. His monotone voice, his empty eyes, a lifeless shell of a man. That's their solution. And they call it a mercy.

This wound is still new, still raw, he can't block it out the way he can push past the old scars.

Hawke notices the side-conversation he's clearly having in his own head, and she lets her fingers gently circle around his wrist, calling him back to their present reality, calming his anger.

"What about your nightmares?" she asks the elf quietly. "_Are_ you plagued by demons already?"

Feynriel says he isn't sure, and Hawke nods.

She remembers strong arms around her, tracing gentle circles on her back through the thin fabric of her sleeping shirt, singing whispered lullabies as he told her he loved her and promised to keep her safe, called her "darling" and "special one." He told her that if she understood what the voices were saying, she could tell them to go away, they wouldn't scare her anymore. He promised he would teach her how to listen, and listen she did.

Mother and Daddy argued that night in harsh, strangled whispers while she pretended to sleep.

Anders tells Feynriel that he understands the nightmare thing, that in the Circle, they'd quickly learned to hide their dreams.

The templars knew full well what a mage with an uncontrolled connection to the Fade meant, and they guarded carefully against it. Kicking and screaming in your sleep was a surefire way to draw unwanted attention and anger.

So when they woke terrified in the night, they bit their lip and cried silent tears and buried themselves in pillows and sheets, a meager fortress, but all the protection they had.

The older apprentices knew how to concoct potions that could provide enough energy to fake it through the day. They splashed their faces with cold water and tried to ignore the dark shadows under their eyes, their slowed reaction times, the foggy haze of unreality that they swam through in the daylight Tower, never quite awake but not asleep.

Anders dreamed when he fell asleep in front of opened windows, with sunlight and the breezes off the lake spilling over him. When he was inevitably found and woken, he was always ready with a lazy smile and a joke or three. Depending on how long he'd been gone, what classes he'd skipped, and who found him, his smart remarks earned him anything from commiserating chuckles to more blood and bruises.

And in the dark, windowless apprentice dorms he lay awake listening to the littlest ones toss and turn and cry. He stood guard against their nightmares, soothing them back to sleep with flickers of light and gentle touches of healing and whispered words of kindness.

This open connection to the Fade is what makes them who they are.

He reminds them that hearing the demons does not mean becoming one. He reminds them that the rest of the world fears them quite enough without them being afraid of themselves.

The templars think the Fade is the problem. They call it dangerous, try to block off the connection, weaken it, make it slippery and hard to grasp. And sometimes they sever it completely.

But the Fade is _life_. Those same templars touch it every night when they sleep, because the Fade reaches out to everybody.

Anders stands with Feynriel and Hawke and wonders why they should be punished for reaching back.


	6. Practical Magic

She loves watching Anders with his patients. She's never seen anything like this before, a mage just... letting their power flow, open and free.

And the way these people look at him, with gratitude, admiration, genuine _friendship_.

She never thought anyone would look at a mage with anything other than terror and hatred in their eyes. That was her father's first lesson: we're _different_, apart, always. Have to stay safe, if you want to be free, you can't trust _anyone_, you never know for sure. Family only.

And after he died... the lesson etched itself in her memory and soul, she learned he was right all along.

But here it's different. Children crowd around and play games, and laugh, the ones that are not on death's doorstep. And the ones that are... Anders can't save everyone, but he has many more successes than failures.

He knows how to make them smile. He knows how to heal more than just physical wounds.

Is it any wonder she keeps finding reasons to come back to this clinic?

She's no good at healing, never has been.

But maybe it's just because she never tried.

"Could you teach me?" she asks suddenly.

Anders turns away from the little boy who has fallen into a gentle sleep, as the blue glow of magic slowly ebbs away.

"What?"

"Could I... learn to do that?"

He smiles lazily. "What happened to being just a cutpurse? Don't you have a reputation to protect?"

"If you don't _want_ to, just say so."

"I will, if you really want to learn." He realizes he has never seen her work a spell before. He vaguely remembers fire, that night in the Chantry, that _must_ have come from her, but... his mind was on other things at the time. It's not like he was watching her fight. "What _can_ you do?"

She shrugs. "Not very much," she admits. "I don't... it's not like I _try_ to use magic. I start fires, mostly. When I'm..."

"Angry," he finishes. "Or scared. When you lose control."

She nods lamely.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," he says gently. "That's how it is for all of us, at first. They say that's what the Circle's for, you know? That it's to protect us. That it's too easy for us to lose control."

"Sometimes... Bethany and I used to stay up all night, and make up stories about what it might be like, to really be able to _do_ magic, not just run away all the time. We never let anyone hear us, not even Father. He..." she swallows hard, remembering... her father had been right all along. "He always got angry, if he heard anyone talk about the Circle. He'd have liked _you_, I bet. Another runaway."

"Not a very good one."

Memories, clawing at him, no matter how much he wants to start over, no matter how often he pushes them away... rope tight against his wrists, icy panic clawing at his stomach, the vibrating metallic crash of gates slamming shut behind him. Reaching out for the Fade, for protection, coming up empty... nothing but pain.

Nothing but pain, and the wall in his mind that blocked it out. As much as he _hate_s walls, he needed that one.

"Your father was right. It's not about _us_ losing control. They don't fear that half as much as they fear losing control _of us_. I fought. I fought _so hard_, Hawke, but... you _don't_ fight the templars. You just... survive."

He sits down, takes a few shallow breaths. It's as though he's only just realized how much he's really saying.

Honesty. What is it about her that cuts through all his defenses?

"Anders," she breathes. "It's..." she hesitates. She knows what she's asking him to do. There's a very important barrier between them that's about to be crossed.

They are breaking all the rules. No one sees you vulnerable. No one sees you weak.

But this is a place of healing, and he is clearly hurt. This is old pain, wounds that haven't healed, that may not _ever_ heal. "It's okay," she promises, reaching for his hand. She's crossing barriers of her own. He wasn't wrong, about her reputation. She doesn't _do_ this kind of thing, not with anybody but her younger siblings. It's been _years_. "You can talk to me," she says simply. "You can tell me, if you need to. Whatever you need."

He nods.

"Your father was lucky," he says softly, but she doesn't miss the bitterness in his voice. "To get away on his first try. I can't... I tell myself freedom is worth it but honestly..." he looks around the room, at the sleeping patients, or their family members conversing quietly, but she can tell he's seeing other people, in his memories, a long time ago, a place far away. "I wouldn't recommend following in my footsteps." He gives her a weak half-smile. "Don't get caught, Hawke. Your father was right about that too. If it comes down to it... better to die fighting."

But she shakes her head. "No," she says stubbornly. "You don't _really_ think that. Because if you did, you'd be dead."

And _she_ looks at the people here in this clinic too, and _really_ sees them.

Someone who really thought it would be better to die wouldn't work so hard to save so many lives.

And she's seen Anders in action enough to know that he'd never take that easy way out.

She knows a little, about how the Circle really works. It's been a long time since she believed in the naive vision of a real home for magic that she'd whispered about with her baby sister, that safe and beneficial shelter that the rest of Thedas still believes in.

As she got older, thirteen, fourteen, her father began to take her off alone, away from Bethany, told her stories, of what the templars did, how they maintained _control_.

And the thought of Anders suffering those abuses... pure, good-hearted Anders, who can make her smile with no effort at all, who makes kids laugh... the familiar fiery anger crashes like waves in her blood.

"They never let me get away with anything," Anders says bitterly. "Every joke, every smart remark... they all had a price." He's not looking at her, instead focusing on some random point on the far wall. He takes a breath, a long pause, enough to make her wonder if that's all she's going to get out of him. And it's more than she expected or deserves, really. But she waits, and he eventually takes in another careful breath, and continues. His voice is low and quiet. "Sometimes they'd leave the wards down on purpose, during a beating, just waiting for me to slip, use magic to attack them back, so they could use it as more evidence against me. I... got good at never letting anything slip. Pissed them off even more." He smiles, but it's harsh and angry, a predator's grin. "They never liked that I was stronger than them."

Hawke nods. She understands. Her father's methods were not so harsh, but when he taught her, it was never how to use her power, but how to hide it. To stifle her abilities and deflect suspicion. To never let anything slip.

"I've never seen you lose control, you know," Anders reminds her. "And you've had plenty of chances. You already know far more than the Circle could ever teach you."

She returns his attention to the people across the room, smiling. Safe. "I still don't know how to do that."

He squeezes her hand. "Well," he promises. "That, I'll teach you."


	7. All The Pieces Matter

"Why do you let yourself get dragged into these things?" Anders asks.

They are scrambling over the rocky beaches of the Wounded Coast. Far below them, the waves pound and crash against the cliffs, swirling dark below them whenever they are brave enough to peer over the edge. The mabari follows them, barking loudly. The sound bounces off the rocks and is eventually swallowed by the water.

"Why do you follow me?" Hawke retorts.

"Someone needs to make sure you don't get killed, that's why. Besides," he adds, as he accidentally-on-purpose lets his arm brush against hers. He grips her hand and pulls her back from the sharp drop-off. "You've never told me to stop."

She smiles. "I never asked you to either. Stop, if you want to."

"Who said I want to?"

She heaves a dramatic sigh. "I don't need a babysitter, Anders. I never have."

"Is that how you think of me?" He sounds slightly wounded. "Hawke, I'm not a babysitter. I... watching your back like this, if reminds me..."

"Of your friend in Amaranthine. I know. You've told me."

They find one of the dozens of hideaways littering the coastline paths, a small patch of flat sand scattered with larger rocks and hidden by small, scraggly bushes. Anders stops, digging in his pack for some food to give himself an excuse, but he wants Hawke to rest. He wants to pretend that they are just on a pleasant hike, that she is not here on a mission for Athenril, a lieutenant easy to sacrifice in Kirkwall's continuous gang warfare. She's here because the Carta is up to something with the Qunari, she's here because the Raiders are trying to lock down their hold on these waters. There are guards patrolling these coasts for the same reasons, and whether they'll want to arrest her or fight side-by-side seems to change depending on the day. He has good reason to worry about her.

She follows him, but frowns when she sees he intends to stop. She is hyperalert and ready to move. Ready to fight. Everything is a mission, with her.

He understands that instinctive fear, that unwillingness to ever stay still, that inability to relax.

"If you liked the Wardens so much, why did you leave?" she asks him pointedly. Because digging into his business is apparently something _else_ she'll never stop doing. She's never shy about saying exactly what's in her head. Manners don't concern her. And for some _crazy_ reason, despite his superficial annoyance when she insists on digging up his past, he always answers her questions. He's been dangerously honest with her from the start.

"I'm not a soldier," he tells her, and he sees the sly smile tickle at the corner of her mouth.

"Good," she says darkly. "My stupid brother is a soldier. I _hate_ soldiers."

A grin lights up his face as he lays back on the sand. Men with swords and armor who think they can boss other people around... he has good reason to hate them too, and he could never, _ever_ become one. Too many years spent spitting sarcastic insults in their faces and taking the retaliatory hits for that to _ever_ happen. He's too smart to let his fists do his talking for him.

But there's little danger here, on the wide open beach, far away from Kirkwall's dark streets, far from the Tower's claustrophobic walls, in the sun. "I don't know if you've noticed this, but I'm not much for taking orders," he reminds Hawke. She isn't either, and that's another thing that worries him. He's seen the tension growing between her and Athenril. It's only a matter of time before that fragile working relationship implodes and she loses the one shield she has against Kirkwall's templars. But then... it's not a shield so much as blackmail, and he _knows_ Hawke is not stupid enough that she hasn't realized it. She feels trapped by lack of other options just like he did, once upon a time.

"I wasn't too keen on throwing myself against Darkspawn either," he says carefully. Being forced into the kind of suicidal fights no one else is dumb enough to take on is no kind of freedom. "That was more Ser Pounce-a-lot's hobby."

"Your cat?" she asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah. I bet he's racked up a vicious kill count by now. Hell, he may have taken over command of the Keep."

Hawke can't help but laugh, as she sits down beside him, leaning against one of the larger rocks. Her hand wraps tight around her knife as she continues searching the horizon, for threat or prey, but it's a start. "You don't think you're maybe overestimating the abilities of stray kitten?"

"You've never met _that_ kitten," Anders reminds her with an easy sigh. "Pounce saved my life a couple of times, I'm sure of it."

At their feet, the dog growls contentedly and curls up to nap. Hawke smiles. "I think I know what that's like."

He hands her some of the bread and cheese he'd stuffed into his bag, and she takes it with barely a comment. He watches her attack the food like it's her last meal and wonders when she last ate, _what_ she last ate. He shakes his head. Like he can talk. Most of what he does manage to get his hands on he gives away in a heartbeat, to the kids who hang around his clinic. Or to Hawke.

"Would you fight, if you could?" he says quietly. She swallows a large bite and meets his eyes.

"Fight who?"

"The people who think they've got you trapped, who hold all the power because you're afraid. The people who think you won't _dare_ disobey their orders."

Hawke's eyes widen, remembering a dark, moonless night, when she'd had too much to drink and was off her game, Athenril confronting her... Does Anders know about that? How could he?

She could take the elf in a fight, of course she could. There aren't many people she couldn't kill if she wanted to, and that knowledge usually fills her with confidence and power, but that night, slammed against a brick wall in a Lowtown alley, a knife held to her throat... a whisper in her ear, "I _own_ you. One word from me, and you'll be locked in the Gallows before you can blink. A pretty little thing like you, I bet you'd give the templars a good time."

It was _stupid_, she'd been taking stupid risks, pocketing more than her cut, trying to get some more coin, for her mother and Gamlen and Carver, they're always so _needy_, they rely on her for _everything_. It's why she's here now, trying to prove herself, to get back in the elven woman's good graces. And she hates herself for it, just like she'd hated herself in Ferelden, slipping through bandit camps and mercenary bands. So _yes_, she'd fight.

But she knows Anders isn't worried about minor criminals. She picks up a stick and traces lines in the sand.

"You're talking about the templars." It is not a question.

The templars who killed her father, and hunted Anders down over and over again. They tried to beat him into submission but never _quite_ succeeded. But their punishments were inescapable, and so brutal that he still fears them even now. It is a barely controlled fear that bleeds into violent anger, a razor's edge that leads him to ask her if she'll fight them, but his voice shakes when he asks, as though he's not quite sure he can believe that he is asking.

_You don't fight the templars,_ he's told her before. What's changed?

"There was a fire," he tells her, with barely contained excitement lighting up his eyes. "The Starkhaven Circle burned to the ground. The Chantry is spreading the word that it was an unfortunate accident, but it's a lie. The mages rebelled, _a whole Circle_. If we stand together, the templars _can't_ stop us! The pieces are moving, Hawke. Will you fight?"

She nods, still uncertain, but it feels _right_, she feels powerful again, not afraid.

"Who's the one dragging me into things now?" she mutters.

But Anders grins, confident and contagious, and she smiles back, and takes his hand.


	8. Secret Things

She and Anders, and Isabela, and Varric, have said a million times that they will never understand the Qunari. But some hint of recognition flickers in the eyes of this Saarebas, _dangerous thing_, as he forces something into her hand and closes her fingers around it.

"Take this secret thing, Basvaarad. Remember this day."

Hawke nods, her throat suddenly dry.

What kind of person kills themselves instead of taking freedom when it's offered?

She glances back at Anders. He's still breathing hard, his fingers clench tight around his staff. She feels the angry pulsing power of magic flaring around him, he will not let it go.

And she can't blame him.

They may not understand much about the Qunari, but they understand all too well what it is to fight for their lives against those who fear them enough to kill or enslave with single-minded zealotry, who assume the worst and attack first, ask questions later or never.

And when they kill those who attack them because it is the only way to stay alive, it is used as justification, proof of their inherent danger.

"You fear us," Anders had accused the huge warriors surrounding them. It would almost be ridiculous except that it was true. A mage backed into a corner is probably the scariest thing in all of Thedas.

The air around the smells of fire and death. She shivers, and stuffs the Qunari's - _Ketojan's_ - amulet deep into her pocket.

But she does not let go of it.

She can't get him out of her head, even that night, in the clinic. Anders insists that there must have been something _wrong_ with the Qunari mage, but he also admits that his choice was not unfamiliar or uncommon.

"For all their talk of demons," he laments, "the most common death I saw for a mage was suicide."

In violent or quiet ways, he watched as others escaped the Tower in the only way they knew how. Some were young, just kids, like he'd been the first time he ran. Some were old, worn down by a life spent caged, every action questioned. Most were just on the cusp of adulthood, the ones who refused to be forced into the templars' cruel test, determined to go out on their own terms instead of waiting anxiously for a Harrowing and the possibility of Tranquility. At least this way, they still held on to their soul and their humanity.

Anders cannot think of a single Tower apprentice he'd known who hadn't at least thought about it. They weighed the pros and cons of various methods, usually after too much wine, laughing, teasing, because if they could make light of it that was sometimes just enough proof that they weren't that far gone yet. People that took those discussions of suicide too seriously were usually the ones who were closest to trying one of those methods. But every time someone did, the rest of them were left with gnawing guilt and fear and _understanding_. They all had those moments when they were only one step away from that choice, the edge of that cliff. Sometimes still, laying awake in the clinic, knowing the only life he'll ever have a shot at is this one, surrounded by blood and pain and despair, he wonders if it's worth it.

The bouts of frustrated depression never last long, especially since Hawke has a habit of dragging him out to get drunk and/or kill things, knowing that when he tries to push her away that's when he needs a change of scenery more than ever.

Sometimes he resents these side trips that drag him far from Kirkwall, to the Dalish camp on the mountain, to the rocky beaches of the coasts, though he knows Hawke means well and as must as he insists sometimes that he doesn't want to go, he will always follow her, and he will always find something to appreciate. The feel of dirt beneath his fingers, the buffeting winds that smell of the ocean, the thrill of finding some flower clinging to life in a trampled clearing. The same things he always found when he insisted on freedom. Little escapes that make life worth living. And when he points them out to Hawke she smiles too.

Still, in Kirkwall, people need him, and that's new. People _come to him for help_, and that gives him a new kind of power that has nothing to do with the magic that flows in his blood. It's a new kind of freedom that comes from connection. In Kirkwall he has begun to work with what he already has, a network of Ferelden refugees who keep him hidden and supplied, to connect to the furtive fledgling shadow cells of mages who reach desperately for some alternative to the Chantry's choking control.

He never had the illusion that his decisions were intelligent or that anybody should try to follow his lead. He only knew that he refused to stay trapped in a prison, judged and condemned by people who knew nothing about him.

And now he knows he's not alone.

There are other people all around him who understand that making stupid decisions is better than making no decisions at all, that digging yourself into a deeper hole is better than standing frozen, that forcing the authorities to _pay attention to you_, even if it's dangerous attention, is infinitely better than being ignored.

There are people like Hawke, and her family, like the Starkhaven apostates, like Rhyanon and Jowan and even Uldred, like the mages _and templars_ who speak in furtive whispers in the shadows of the Gallows, people who in their own ways stand up and insist that magic _is not a curse_, that mages _are people_, with families and loves and hopes and goals, that death _cannot_ be the only choice they have, that freedom is worth fighting for.

Leaving Kirkwall feels too much like running away from that fight, and he refuses to keep running.


	9. Deep Roads

"_Why_ are we going into the Deep Roads again?" Anders hisses quietly. The question is meant for her ears only, easily missed in the clamor and commotion of Bartrand's pompous speech and the last minute preparations.

"I have to," Hawke says simply. "You don't have to come."

The look on his face makes it very clear what he thinks of that idea. "You do know that Wardens go down there to _die_. It's... not a place you make real plans to come back from. Certainly not a tourist destination."

She takes a sidelong glance at Varric, leading the dwarves in sealing up the last of their supplies. She still doesn't trust him, she doesn't trust _anyone_, but he'd been right about knowing the city. He hasn't lied to her so far, and had even found her a couple of jobs away from Athenril's clutches.

Not that she'd gotten off _entirely_ clean there. The elven smuggler didn't like her pet mage slipping out to freelance, or worse, ally herself with the competition.

So far, thankfully, she hadn't taken it any further than voicing her displeasure, loudly and often, the type of idle threats Hawke had long since learned to ignore. She heard worse on a near-daily basis from her own kid brother.

But what the dwarf said is true. It _couldn't_ hurt to get out of the city for a while, and if he's right about the take they can expect from this field trip, she'll be able to hand Athenril a pile of sovereigns large enough to make her forget they ever met and still have enough money to get her family out of Gamlen's foul apartment. Maybe even enough to let her mother by back the childhood home she wants so badly, though Hawke has no idea why. Her whole life everything her mother ever said about Kirkwall made it clear that she hated the city and the role in it that her own parents had spent a lifetime grooming her for. Was she lying? Maybe it had just been made crystal clear for her, coming back here, that running off with an apostate was a _huge_ mistake.

If she wants a do-over, a chance to pretend that she'd never met Malcolm and that her daughter had never been born, Hawke is all to happy to give that to her.

She gives her mother and Carver one last brief glance and doesn't look back. Easier for all of them to break all ties. At least then the templars can't claim they're harboring an apostate.

In Ferelden they don't usually punish mages' _families_, but Anders has been paying attention and tells her that the Chantry is much more strict when it comes to enforcing the law here. No wonder her father had fled from this city as quickly as he could. What is _she_ even doing here? Her fingers twitch and tighten around the knife at her belt.

Not planning to stay, that's what.

Anders moves close behind her, reaching out with a questioning touch. He thinks she's nervous about going underground. Or maybe that's just what _he's_ nervous about.

He hasn't said much about the Wardens, but most of what he has said makes it obvious that he hadn't enjoyed his time with them. Their Right of Conscription bought his freedom from the Circle, but he owes them no loyalty. And his voice is carefully controlled each time he mentions his _hatred_ of the Deep Roads. He is not lying, joking, or exaggerating about their threats and horrors.

"You don't have to come," she repeats, and this time her voice is gentle, genuinely concerned.

He shakes his head. "If you're going, Hawke, I'm going."

She nods. She'd expected nothing less.

Bartrand wastes no time in moving their group out of the city to the entrance to the Roads clearly marked on Anders' Warden maps.

From the minute they step into the darkness, Anders _hovers_. By the time they set camp, Hawke is seriously annoyed that she can't seem to take a step without tripping into him. He reaches out to grab her every time she attempts to look around or go talk to Varric. He questions her every move.

But the truth is, they've just gotten here and already their way is blocked, made completely impassable by a mountain of collapsed rubble, and it makes it tauntingly obvious that they could all easily die here, trapped miles underground, and though she pushes him away and rolls her eyes, she is grateful for his presence.

Because here there is no wind, no sky, nothing but heavy rock pressing down too close, and it makes her _very_ nervous. An eerie haunting feeling clings to her, resonating with the mana in her blood. The Veil is thin here, continuously weakened and ripped apart by the perpetual memory of death and destruction that will never fade as long as the darkspawn remain.

Anders responds to her questioning gaze with a slight nod. He feels it too.

No wonder he hates this place.

There is no way to tell time down here, but somehow she can _feel_ night falling, making the ruins seem even colder and more oppressive.

One by one, the others of their party disappear into tents and bedrolls, determined to claim what sleep they can. Anders volunteers to join the first watch. He claims that he will be able to sense the presence of any nearby darkspawn, though when she asks how he'll be able to manage that, he only says that it's a Grey Warden thing.

He encourages her to sleep, but just the knowledge that those monsters may be close bring images of Bethany's violent death to assault her.

Still, she must manage to grasp a few minutes of rest through the nightmares, because she doesn't remember Anders crawling into her tent, just opening her eyes to see him thrashing around in the darkness, obviously struggling with haunting dreams of his own.


	10. Gifts and Curses

When she opens her eyes again, she is alone in the tent.

Anders' bedroll has been neatly stashed in a corner, the only sign he was ever there at all.

There is no sun to give a clue, but Hawke can hear clattering movement and gruff voices barking orders - they must be calling it morning. She steps out into the bustling camp, scanning for Anders.

There - sitting on an out-of-the-way rock, staring out into the neverending darkness. Trying to be alone, obviously, but Varric has disentangled himself from his brother's devious scheming and gone to harrass the mage. At least he had the decency to bring breakfast with him, and no matter what kind of mood he's in, Anders is not the type to turn down food.

"Oh cheer up, Blondie," Varric demands good-naturedly. "You'll drive yourself mad if you think too much down here."

Anders ignores him and looks up to see Hawke. He pushes past the dwarf without a word, leaving Varric to sigh in exasperation before heading off to hassle someone else.

"Are you alright?" Hawke whispers.

Anders nods, but she sees the way his eyes dart wildly through the shadows, the way he holds his staff ready to defend against some attacker that may not even be _real_.

As they set out to seek an alternate route around the cave-in, she's the one that hovers over _him_.

It does not get any easier with time.

They stumble through the days without thinking, setting one foot in front of the other, dragging themselves behind the rest of the treasure-hunting party, who is clearly beginning to question the wisdom of this venture. The only one who still seems excited is Bartrand.

It is almost a relief when they stumble upon the small bands of darkspawn that are apparently already returning to claim this home. Unlike their nightmares, at least these are things they can fight.

Anders feels them long before there is any visible evidence of their presence. Within him, that dark poison that connects them leaps and stirs, alert to the nearness of other bodies carrying the same taint.

It thrums on a different frequency than the familiar comforting song of living, flowing mana that he feels with Hawke. Mages recognize the sameness in each other, but never in this frightening, alien way.

This is the part of being a Grey Warden that he can _never_ escape, the part he tries to forget, but it will never be able to ignore it here, on the darkspawn's home ground.

Even with his warning, they barely have time to prepare before the darkspawn are upon them. He doesn't want to think about what it would mean if he _didn't_ have this handy trick of being able to sense them coming.

He catches Hawke's eye, and she flashes him a determined smile before throwing a burst of flame to catch their mindless attackers.

"Destructive forces of nature, coming up," he declares, following her assault with one of his own. And it feels _good_, it chases away the previous night's dreams in the best possible way. He'd forgotten how overwhelmingly delicious it is to let loose like this, to weave magic through his fingers with no wards or limiters choking off the connection, no fear that someone is watching, waiting to trap him. Here, he is not powerless.

Even surrounded as they are by sickening monsters aiming to kill, he laughs. This is easy, this is _fun_.

This is the gift Rhyanon gave him in the Joining, and he knows that as much as he hates the Deep Roads and does not belong with the other Wardens at the Keep, he can never be angry for _this_.


	11. Want

It is easy to see what draws Varric and Bartrand and the other dwarves into these depths. They claim it's about money, treasure, but in the hushed stillness of the precipice staring down into this long-forgotten thaig, even Hawke and Anders are nearly overwhelmed by the almost physical sensation of great wonder and great loss.

Anders wonders what it must be like to trace a connection to a civilization so ancient it has passed out of memory.

He has no keen understanding of tradition or home. The only family he knows about exists only in flickering fragments that linger in the hidden places in his mind.

They explore only briefly, inexplicably drawn deeper into the ruins.

Anders glances at Hawke and sees her flushed and slightly excited, caught in the grasp of whatever unnatural force this is that is singing all around them.

The song pulses from a stone alter in the middle of a large room. Black and red and gold ripple and pool through the weave of metal and stone, a living liquid contained and sustained through centuries.

"Is that... lyrium?" Hawke wonders aloud. Her voice is an awestruck whisper.

"It's definitely magic," Anders breathes.

He can feel it reaching out to him, calling, _pulling him closer_ with the darkness that flows into and under the darkspawn corruption that is everpresent here. "Not the good kind," he amends.

The dwarves of course care only about its potential financial value.

Hawke seems torn between reaching out and knowing better. In the end, she flings the idol away, into Varric's waiting grip, as though touching it burns her. Maybe it does. She seems relieved to be rid of the thing, but the relief lasts only as long as it takes for Bartrand to slip out of the cavern with the dark object glittering a bloody reflection in his eyes.

They realize - too late - what his intentions _must be_.

The door slams shut behind them.

Hawke tries, but Anders has been down in these Deep Roads before. He knows without needing to check that these gates are much too strong for magic to unlock. Built to keep the darkspawn out, they will always be more than enough to trap them in. He's torn between throwing himself against the door to pound hopelessly and collapsing into a corner to wait for the inevitable. He does neither.

He just stands there, paralyzed and helpless, gulping for air. He _can't breathe_.

The pounding of the slamming door echoes in his ears. He hears cruel laughter reverberating all around him - Bartrand's at first, but it bleeds into other voices. He squeezes his eyes shut, braces for pain. He is _certain_ it is coming, because when the templars lock him in the dark it is _always_ only a matter of time.

It's _Varric_, against all odds, who pulls him out of it, sighing dramatically but moving forward as though this is nothing more than a minor annoyance. "Come on," he says, in a tone that gives them no choice but to follow. "Let's go and see if there's another way out."

Anders begins to understand how the dwarf managed to wheedle Hawke into this trip in the first place.

Varric leads by several paces, because Hawke will not move until she is sure Anders is following.

Her eyes are dark with worry, but she knows better than to ask if he is okay.

They both know that the only answer he could give her would be a lie.

The only thing keeps him going is desperation - but his heartbeat will not slow down, his breathing is panicked and ragged no matter what he does.

He tries to focus on Hawke, reminds himself that just the fact that there is a pathway in front of them, that they've left the chamber with the idol and the locked door behind long ago, means that _he is not trapped_. His hands are sweaty. He stretches the sleeves of his coat down over his fingers and tries - and fails - to calm down.

When the _rocks_ start to attack them he is not entirely sure he isn't hallucinating, but survival instinct keeps him fighting.

He doesn't pay as much attention as he should, winds up bruised and bleeding because he _lets them_ get close to him, he should _know better_.

It seems like the fight ends too quickly. He doesn't remember much.

He looks up to see Hawke watching him, exhausted and nervous.

He heals himself absentmindedly. He heals her too.

Around them, the still air seems even more oppressively silent now that the echoes of battle have faded away.

He resists the urge to scream just to hear something, which is good, because the quiet is the only thing that allows them to notice the rough grating scrape of rock on rock, the low rumble that warns just in time that this fight is only just beginning.

The quiet was only temporary, an illusion.

_I KNOW WHAT YOU WANT_, echoes a voice that is not speaking, that does not come from anything living. _YOU SEEK A WAY OUT OF THIS PLACE, AND ONLY I CAN GIVE IT TO YOU_.

Anders freezes.

Because the words simultaneously boom and whisper through his consciousness. He can _feel_ this thing's stirring power, and he knows it is not lying.

His heartbeat picks up, and mana pulses through his blood.

"Anders?" Hawke whispers uncertainly.

And it takes a long time, but he swallows, forces himself to calm, stills the magic that wants so badly to leap out from him.

He clutches his staff and eyes the demon.

"Don't listen to it, Hawke."

"What are our other options?" Varric says lightly.

"Don't. Listen. To it." Anders repeats, harsher now.

Because he's heard these words before, these _exact_ words. These voices, these whispers, alone in the dark, it took all his strength to fight them and he is _so tired_.

The knowledge that they can find him _even here_ is almost enough to break him down. Frustrated tears well in his eyes until he shakes his head and forces them away.

Hawke is honestly tempted to side with Varric - what _are_ their other options? - but Anders is so desperately opposed to the idea that she gives him a reassuring nod and takes his hand.

If he is _so certain_, she _has_ to trust him.

She stares down the rock... _thing_, knowing she's likely to be signing her own death warrant. "No deal."

The demon screams, launching itself against them in mindless rage, furious that they would deny it the meal it craves.


	12. Open Doors

They fight demons and darkspawn, but this is nothing new. Anders is glad for it. Not that he'd _ask_ to be attacked by monsters underground, but even through his exhaustion, thoughts and movements slowed by lack of sleep and the churning terror in the pit of his stomach that _will not go away_, having something to hit is a welcome distraction. Adrenaline and mana flow through his veins, and he forces his fear and anger outwards in controlled bursts that leave bodies behind, lightning-charred and fire-singed.

When no other attack is forthcoming, Hawke meets his eye, and gives him a determined smile.

He gives her his own hesitant smile in return, but now that the battle has ended, he can already feel the walls closing in again. His entire body feels itchy as they press forward through the darkness.

But it turns out the demon _was_ lying about being their only way out.

Hawke lingers behind the group as they loot a stockpile of treasure chests, a veritable playground full of valuables. There looks to be enough gold to swim in, and Varric's eyes sparkle with glee.

But her focus is on Anders.

"How did you know not to take the deal?" she asks softly.

"It was a _demon_, Hawke. Surely you... felt it?"

But as he says it, he realizes he is not at all certain. After all, she didn't grow up in the Circle, with their warnings echoing every minute of every day, literally beaten into him. She never went through the Harrowing, tense with the knowledge that one wrong move, one wrong word, meant instant death.

He's not an idiot. He knows that mages have been corrupted, poisoned by their dreams because they failed to recognize the dangers, overcome by the monsters that prowl in the night because they weren't _trained_ the way he was: taught not to trust anything, to _never_ accept an offer of help. Nothing comes without strings.

"I know," Hawke says. "That it's a demon, I mean."

Anders revises his opinion. He's pretty much always known. Hawke may not have been locked in the Tower the way he was, but she's no stupid kid. That not-trusting thing? She's pretty much got that down cold, Circle or no.

"But how did you know it was lying," she presses. "About being the only way out?"

"I didn't," he admits, and the knowledge is heavy, a rock in his chest. What if they really _had_ been trapped here? Could he die, could he _watch Hawke die_, slowly suffocating or starving in these ancient tunnels, knowing she'd had even the barest chance of escape, and he'd stolen it because of his own paranoia?

Only the fact that he can see the door that Varric and the map both confirm will take them back to the surface keeps him from losing it completely.

Hawke takes his hand. "It's okay, Anders. You were right."

"I think that's what worries me the most," he mutters. He sighs, a mournful echo of the confusion in her eyes. "I wasn't thinking about this place at all. I wasn't thinking about you or the other people here depending on that choice to get them home. I heard that voice, _felt_ it..." She nods, and he knows she felt it too, that silky liquid darkness wrapping around you and _pulling_ you, closer and closer, whispering in your ear... "The only thing I knew was that I had to fight it. Because it's the only thing I could ever fight in the Tower."

"You seek a way out of this place..." she repeats, softly.

And he nods.

"When the templars caught me, there was always punishment. Solitary. A dungeon cell."

Just _thinking_ about it makes him squirm. Talking about it makes it real.

He _needs_ to get out of here, needs sunlight, air... his heartbeat speeds up again. He forces himself to ignore it. "It was like this, but... worse. Smaller. Darker. And there wasn't anybody else around, no darkspawn to fight, no treasure to hunt. Just the whispers in my mind."

Hawke closes her eyes, squeezes his hand, listens. She hears nothing but the echo of her breathing, her heart pumping in her chest. She manages about ten seconds before she has to open her eyes again, seeks a human voice to reassure her. She can't even _imagine_...

"How long?"

"The last time was the worst. A year. I think I almost lost my mind. Honestly, sometimes I'm not sure I didn't."

That explains the sexy, tortured look she'd joked about at their first meeting. He hadn't said a word to explain it.

It hasn't gone away - that haunted darkness in his eyes, the way he flips between clinging to her like she's the one thing keeping him from drowning and pushing her away so forcefully it's like a physical wall between them. Not that she hasn't been guilty of throwing back the same walls, too often.

A _year_.

No wonder he wants to fight them.

"I'm really sorry, Anders," she whispers, because she feels like she's supposed to say something, but words are insignificant.

He squeezes her hand reassuringly, so he must know what she meant.

Varric's head suddenly appears from behind a pile of loot. "If you two lovebirds are done canoodling, I found a key. And I'm pretty sure it's the kind that opens doors, like that one."

Hawke glances at Varric quickly, then turns back to Anders, looking slightly panicked. "Did he just call us lovebirds?"

He shrugs. "Did he just say _canoodling_?"

And the look on his face is so incredulous that Hawke can't help but laugh. A second later, Anders laughs too.

The sound echoes back off the walls and surrounds them, as Varric jams the key into the huge, rusted door lock and forces it open. The way home.


	13. Good Stories

When they emerge from the Deep Roads, stumbling out of the caves into the familiar landscape of the Free Marches, the rain is pouring down in drenching sheets.

Varric mutters and gripes, but it's clear he shares their relief at being free of that underground prison. Dwarf he may be, but he's lived his whole life under the same sky as the rest of them. Still, Anders is certain that what really bothered Varric was the thought of dying without anyone around to spin his demise into a truly epic tale.

Most of the party retreats to the shelter of the trees - they are reluctant to return to the caves but equally hesitant to begin the long walk back to Kirkwall in this weather. But he stays out in the open, letting the rain soak him through. Hawke looks at him like he's crazy, but he notices that she hasn't moved into a dry spot either.

"If my mother were here, she'd tell you to come in before you got sick," she says playfully.

He smiles, opening his hand to catch the rain, licking at where it lands near his mouth. "You always listen to your mother?"

She snorts. "Hardly. I _never_ listen to my mother."

They revel in the rain until Varric calls them over for a quick conference. They decide to press ahead to Kirkwall with the knowledge that at this time of year, rain like this can last for weeks without breaking, and there's nothing to gain by waiting.

They make it to the city as night falls, and though Hawke and Anders both are nearly collapsing from exhaustion, Varric hauls them to the Hanged Man for a celebratory drink, which turns into several, and after last call they wind up in his room surrounded by all the _stuff_ they dragged with them from the expedition.

In their hurry to get out of those deadly tunnels, they'd pretty much grabbed whatever they could carry, barely glancing at any of it. Only now do they take the time to sort through the chests, which turn out to hold a really bizarre assortment of junk, the kind of things that remind them that these things came from _real people_, who left random sketches and smoking pipes and clothes in addition to weapons and valuables.

As she picks up some robes and carefully refolds them, Hawke idly wonders what people might have found, hundreds of years from now, if their party _had_ remained trapped down there among the wreckage.

Can you reconstruct a life from the scattered random objects left behind?

She's about to move on, throwing the robes into the "not particularly useful" pile, when Anders takes her arm gently.

"Hawke, do you know what this is?" When he asks, there is a certain breathless excitement behind his words.

"A pretty dress?"

He takes the robes from her carefully, wipes some of the dust away, and shows her the symbol, woven in gold. "It's the Spiral Eye."

"And that's... supposed to mean something to me?"

"It's a good story," he tells her. "One I would have thought your father might have shared with you."

When her look of confusion does not go away, he smiles, holding the robes in his careful grip, tracing the embroidery with his thumb. He can't help but remember _finding_ this good story, curled up in a quiet corner of the library, in some random history book. But he'd loved it, even as he wondered why the templars would leave evidence of such violent resistance to their abuses where someone like him could find it, even by accident. They'd always taunted him with the knowledge that _nobody_ fought the Circle. But in his arms, still marked with fading bruises, he held a thick tome, written proof that the fight _was_ possible, that he wasn't the first one to ever try. He came back to read it, again and again.

"Once upon a time," he starts, and Hawke smiles at his deliberate reference to the fairy tales that highlight the kind of normal childhood neither of them had. "There was this girl, a mage. Her name was Ceridweth. They locked her up in Kirkwall's Gallows, but she decided that really _sucked_, so she ran away."

Hawke takes in a sharp breath. Now she's _really_ paying attention. No wonder he memorized this scrap of information. No wonder he thought her father might have held it close as well. She wonders if Daddy _had_ known the story, and kept it to himself. Maybe he even planned to tell her about it later, in one of their evening walks through the woods at the edge of Lothering. She chews on her lower lip and forces the pain of the memories down, concentrates on the sound of Anders voice, on his words.

If he's noticed the way she's reacted, he shows no sign. He seems lost in his own memories, honestly.

"For years, she evaded the templars," he continues quietly, almost in a whisper. "She hid in forests, attaching herself to friendly mercenary bands here and there, slipping into cellars of friends and allies all throughout the Free Marches. And stalking the templars who abused the mages they claimed to protect, leaving this symbol next to each of her victims. They call her the Spiral Eye." He shrugs. "The official story is that they caught her, made her Tranquil. But there's never been any proof."

"And you think this is real?" she asks, noticing that she sounds just as quietly awestruck as he does. "It's legit?"

"She'd be long dead either way," Anders admits. "But Hawke... didn't you ever get the feeling you were just... _meant_ to have something? Meant to find it? What _possible_ reason could there be for this to be in the Deep Roads?"

There's _no_ reason. There'd be no reason for a long-ago apostate to go into the Deep Roads.

Unless she'd gone there to hide, the same as they had. Even the templars surely would not be desperate enough to follow a mage down into those darkspawn-infested ruins. Maybe she'd dropped an extra set of robes, walked away thinking they'd never matter anyway. Maybe this gear hadn't started off underground at all, but had been picked up and carried, stashed there by someone else later on, for reasons they can only guess at.

The only thing that matters now is that the robes _were_ there, and now they're here, and Anders looks like a child just given a special gift, holding in his hands tangible evidence that sometimes good stories are true.


	14. Bad Looks, Good Intentions

Hawke blinks her eyes open to the obnoxious light of morning streaming in through the grimy windows of... _where_ is she?

More blinking.

A groan, rolling over, reaching out with a groping hand, trying to guess at her surroundings.

A bed. That's a good start.

Her head throbs and everything feels fuzzy. She tries to sit up, but the room seems to spin around her and she immediately decides that movement can wait.

Hangover.

Right.

Taking it slow, she looks around the room again. It's not hers... not that she'd really had a room she'd consider hers in years, not since Lothering - but it is familiar.

It's hearing Varric's cheery rambling that pulls together the straws she's been grasping at. Hanged Man. Not his room, either. He must have paid for a room for her, or else just put her in an empty one and dared someone to say something about it.

And right behind him is Anders, looking far too cheerful, and whistling.

_Whistling?_

"I hate you," she manages to mumble, though something inside her recognizes that she's never seen him this carefree.

"It's a beautiful morning, Hawke," he tells her with a grin.

Between his healing spells and some rank-tasting but surprisingly helpful concoction Varric offers - and she wouldn't trust it at all except that Anders vouches for it - she's able to agree, more-or-less, in a surprisingly short amount of time.

Though she still does not join in on the whistling.

Varric has breakfast brought up to them, and Anders looks slightly stunned by the idea that he has a large meal, all to himself. It's Hanged Man food, true, but worlds better than the scraps, leftovers, and donations he relies on in Darktown. Hawke is impressed by the quality of the meal as well. She had no idea that someone here in this place where the alcohol all tastes like rat piss would put this much genuine effort and care into cooking.

Or maybe it's just that everything tastes better now that they're not buried under miles of rock.

"I suppose you'll be wanting to head home," Varric prompts, when they've finished eating. "Tell your family the good news."

Just the thought is enough to increase her still lingering headache, but despite all their fights, she can't help but remember other things: long late night talks after Daddy died, and again when she'd come home, in that panicked few days before Carver turned up again... if nothing else, her mother at least deserves to know she didn't die in the Deep Roads.

She nods. "Yeah," she says, though it hardly sounds enthusiastic. "I guess you're right."

She notices Anders watching her, but trying to make it look like he isn't. She gives him an apologetic smile. He's never seemed to know _how_ he's supposed to respond to this idea that she has a family.

Well, that makes two of them.

"I'll go with you, if you want," he says quietly.

She shakes her head. "Despite some evidence to the contrary, I don't need a bodyguard or a healer with my own family."

"Alright," he replies. She can't tell if he sounds disappointed or relieved. They'll have to talk later, figure out what exactly just _happened_, whether or not the fact that they couldn't seem to stop _touching_ each other in the Deep Roads actually means anything above ground.

But that can wait.

One awkward conversation at a time is more than enough.

They split up just outside the door.

Anders begins the meandering walk back toward his clinic, not at all certain what he'll find there. Hawke watches him disappear into the Darktown streets, then turns and heads for Gamlen's place. Not home. Never home.

She shoves the door open to see her mother and Carver in the middle of some truly epic argument.

Her mother barely looks up before snapping "_You_ talk some sense into him!"

"I... thought you might be a bit happier to see me alive, honestly?" is her cautious response. What the hell is going on?

It's only then that she notices what her brother is wearing.

And she can't help it, but the sight of templar armor freezes her, starts her heartbeat racing, a survival instinct ingrained in her so long ago that she will never be able to shake it off.

"I've joined the Templar Order," Carver says stubbornly.

And she _loses_ it.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" she screams. She _barely_ stops herself from jumping on top of him and throwing a punch the way she would have when they were kids.

"I'm sick of following you around," he spits right back. "Waiting for your call... I'm not your mabari!"

At hearing that, the dog jumps at at barks loudly, snapping and growling at Carver.

He rolls his eyes. He's always figured it wasn't fair that the dog attached itself to her after their father died.

"Back off," she tells the dog quietly, though honestly she's not sure _why_. Maybe a good bite might snap him out of whatever idiotic rebellion this is.

She holds Carver's gaze. Neither of them looks away. Neither of them blinks.

"What about me?" she finally asks. And she _hates_ it, because she doesn't sound like the one in charge anymore, she sounds like she can barely keep her voice from shaking. A sense of overwhelming _betrayal_ crashes over her like a wave.

And Carver must realize it too, because he stops his insane posturing and seems to deflate. "I won't turn you in," he says quietly. "I _never_ would, you have to know that! I know you can't understand it now... maybe you never will, but I'm doing this _for_ you."

"For me," she repeats, still slightly dazed, but the harsh edge creeps back into her voice.

He nods. "From inside the Order, I can protect you."

"I don't need your protection!"

"You _do_! And anyway, it's not just about you. I can be _part of something_ in this city. Scary things are happening here, very quickly. Things are changing. And I can't just sit back and _watch_, not if I can help somehow." He sighs. "I know you might not believe it, but Daddy didn't only talk to you."

His fingers close around something in his hand, and she glances at it. Scraps of parchment... a letter? "Not all templars are evil," he says, trying to sound calm, but his voice is tinged with the same stubborn determination that she _always_ equates with him. "Not all of them hate mages. But if good men think that's what they are, then it won't take long at all before it becomes true.

"You fear the Circle," he says, and she can't deny it, because this is her baby brother, the one who'd crawled into bed trying to comfort her when she woke up with nightmares. "I do too," he admits.

She watches him, chewing on her lower lip. He'd never said anything like that before, but... they had the same father, he _must_ remember the way Daddy's eyes grew dark with memories, the way he pushed them away sometimes, on what Mother always called his bad days. Carver learned to run and hide from the templars exactly the same way she and Bethany did. "If I'm there... I can... I _have_ to do what I can. Maybe if enough of us try to do the right thing, the Circle doesn't have to be the dead end that you fear."

He turns and walks away, without waiting for a response.

She watches him go, without giving him one.

But she sinks into a nearby chair, her mind swirling.

When did her kid brother grow up?


	15. I Need You

She cannot stay in the cramped little house with her mother and Gamlen.

He tries not to be obvious about it, but Gamlen always looks at her as if she's to blame for all the troubles in his life, and she is still wary of him. Money is the top priority in his life - she's certain he'd sell her out to the Knight Commander if he thought he could get away with it without her mother finding out. The windfall from the Deep Roads warmed his feelings toward her considerably, but she has no illusion that he feels any particular obligation to keep her hidden only because they happen to be related. Family has never been enough to protect most mages. Carver is proof enough of that.

Despite his words, she can't help but feel viciously angry at him. Her father _might_ have understood. It was rare, but he spoke of a couple of templars, only one or two, here and there, that he considered friends. But she is _not_ her father, and what Carver has just done still feels like betrayal. It _hurts_.

They'd never gotten along, exactly, but there was always some unspoken sense of trust between them, this knowledge that when it really mattered they would always stick together.

She watches her mother, pacing as much as the apartment's small, barely-functional kitchen will allow. As always, she has no idea what she's supposed to say to her.

She knows her mother loves her, but their relationship is complicated, tangled up in a web of promises and uncertainty.

Magic. And not the good kind.

It makes her feel like she has to constantly prove that she's _worth_ her mother risking her life every moment by hiding her - and she's not entirely sure that she is. It's this sense of obligation that has her working overtime trying to give her mother the things she wants, the things she deserves. Leandra came to Kirkwall because of a family connection that's fraying and weak. Hawke can't bring herself to abandon her completely, even if it might be easier for both of them.

She takes the dog and heads out into the Lowtown streets. No one says anything about it. Her mother is used to her wordless disappearances - from hours to _years_ - she's been "going out" since around the same time her magic started really manifesting, when she was eight years old. Until then, they'd been able to pretend maybe she just had particularly intense nightmares. Some kids did, it wasn't _always_ a sign of magic. But when she shot a bolt of lightning unintentionally in a fit of anger, some stupid fight she can't even remember the cause of, they couldn't pretend anymore.

And even now she's aware that when her mother looks at her there's a mix of fear and disappointment there. Until that day, she's sure her mother held on to the hope that marrying Malcolm Hawke wouldn't automatically doom their family. Magical talent isn't _always_ passed down to children, though it happens often enough that the Circles do not allow their mages to have children - and when they do, they are taken immediately.

Mages do not have families.

Hawke thinks about _her_ family and thinks this rule might actually be a good one.

She realizes with sudden, frightening clarity, that there is only one person she feels like she belongs with. Her feet have already begun carrying her through the twisting labyrinth of Darktown toward Anders' clinic. When she notices where she's headed, she _almost_ stops and turns around. How is she supposed to talk to Anders right now? The thing she needs to talk about is Carver, and Anders _hates_ the templars, all of them, for good reason. The dog starts nibbling on the tail of her untucked shirt, and doesn't stop until she starts walking again.

She rolls her eyes and mutters, shooting angry glances at the mabari, who wags his tail, the picture of innocence. "Yeah, fine, I get the hint. Stupid dog."

A happy bark is her response.

She doesn't make an effort to let Anders know she's there, just leans against the wall just inside the door of the clinic and watches him work. But her anonymity doesn't last long. She's been coming here often enough, after all, for the local kids to recognize her, and they drag her over to join them in some game they're apparently making up on the spot that somehow involves small rocks and lines drawn in the dirt.

Anders looks up from the cluttered but carefully organized table where he's mixing healing potions when he hears her name, and she's surprised to see the size of the smile on his face when he does.

"I was wondering when I'd see you again," he says, as though it's been weeks since the last time instead of a few days. It's not like she's a _regular_ visitor or anything - sometimes it really has been weeks since she's come to talk to him, and he's never been disappointed before.

"You know where I live," she reminds him. "You can come find me if you need me."

"I don't... _need_ you, exactly. I just... missed having you around."

Really?

"My brother joined the templars," she blurts out. Somehow it seems easier and much more fair than trying to avoid the issue.

Anders raises an eyebrow, and she tenses up, ready to listen to a rant, another angry exhortation to fight... she's ready for him to kick her out of the clinic for good. How could he want her to stay now, when she's _related_ to the enemy?

But he just draws her close to him, the same gentle touch on her arm, that non-verbal language of comfort and connection they'd stumbled into in the Deep Roads.

"Hawke," he whispers. "Are _you_ okay?"

She shakes her head.

"I need you," she admits, not caring at all how desperate and stupid it makes her seem. He holds her, not caring at all that there is a sudden silence in the clinic, that everyone is watching them.


	16. Hope and Healing

The bizarre thing about it all is the _normalcy_. They fall into a rhythm, like it's been this way all their lives.

Hawke practically moves into the clinic, although Anders sleeps on whatever cot isn't occupied by a patient, when he sleeps at all. She thought at first that it might be weird falling asleep in a makeshift hospital bed, but with him looking out for her, it isn't.

When she wakes up haunted by the familiar nightmares, he holds her and hums tuneless melodies in her ear and squeezes her hand and reassures her. She doesn't have to try to explain the icy terror, the way she kicks and punches at things nobody else can see, the fact that her blankets tangle in hopeless knots around her legs because she needs to keep _running_, because it's the only way to stay safe when the entire world is hunting you.

You can't escape the things that are inside you, but it's their instinct to try.

She doesn't have to say a thing, because Anders understands all this, on levels far deeper than words.

She shivers as he holds her in the dark, wondering what it would be like to wake up like this all alone, in a cell, where it is impossible to run, and your screams are silenced not by gentle kisses but by punishing blows. Tears sting her eyes, and she clings tighter to Anders. Not because of her fear, but to let him know that she's here. She will never, ever leave.

The fear slowly bleeds away in the morning light, and they share a tentative smile.

Anders wonders at her willingness to abandon her own life to stay in Darktown. She tells him that she's been drifting through life for _years_, that she's a Ferelden refugee just like everybody else here and she doesn't understand why he thinks she wouldn't belong.

With the last of the money from the Deep Roads, her mother has finally won her petition to the Viscount, reclaimed her childhood home, moved out of Gamlen's place. She wants her daughter with her. Hawke stashes some of her stuff in the huge old estate, but she's already found her home, and that's not it.

The truth is, being here makes her happy. Being with _him_ makes her happy, in a way she's never felt in her entire life. But it's more than that. Here she sees kids playing, laughing. Even as they sit among the sick and dying, women smile. They share their meager food supplies without hesitation. They swap stories and ask about each other's kids and constantly seem to be knitting something to hand out to someone else when the cold weather comes.

Despite the fact that Kirkwall has abandoned them to the gutters, treating them, literally, like shit, the people here are happy to be alive. Many of them steal to survive, would not hesitate to stick a knife in someone else's gut in an alley, but there is a solidarity among them. They stand up for their own. They protect Anders, and now they protect her. And she realizes she _trusts_ them. In the beginning, she couldn't understand why Anders did. But now she sees it, feels it. Belonging. A sense of community that can't be found in the upper levels of the city. Here people have nothing left to lose, they do not hold on to possessions with jealous contempt, or play power games, backstabbing and clawing for selfish dominance.

She's part of it now. No one questions seeing her here. Some even specifically seek her out for conversation. Her initial guarded, uncertain responses give way to a comfortable give-and-take. Between the clinic and the Hanged Man, alcohol and card games, she even begins to feel as though she has _friends_. She never really thought much about her Ferelden roots, but she feels them solidly now, in the refugee community of Darktown.

It's not all perfect, of course. The clinic is still a desperate last stand against despair and sickness and death. For every time she hears a child giggle or sees a mother share a conspiratorial smile and some gossip, there is another woman wailing in grief as her baby dies in her arms, and Anders turns away, collapsing with exhaustion and guilt. Sometimes all the magic in the world isn't enough.

In those times, she simply comes to him and holds his hand, waiting, ready to listen if he wants to talk. More often, he tries to push ahead, to make up for his failures. She's sure he'd kill himself trying to save everyone else if she let him. She doesn't. She forces him to sleep, to eat, she lets the familiar bright energy of raw mana leap from her to him. She saves up all the lyrium potions she can get and forces him to drink them, sometimes.

And she tries to take some of his burden away, in whatever way she can. Distracting the patients from their pain with simple tricks, sparks of fire and lightning that play in her fingers. Organizing supplies. Keeping the place stocked because she can afford it now. Cleaning. She doesn't have to ask him what needs to be done anymore.

A fever has been spreading through the population, the clinic is growing ever-more crowded. Despite her attempts, Anders still works himself too hard trying to keep things from getting even worse than they already are. Dark circles linger under his eyes, and it's not unusual to find him asleep when she turns to ask him a question. He snatches naps in brief bursts, minutes scattered whenever he can find them. The stubble on his cheeks reminds her that he hasn't shaved in days. He washes up only because keeping himself clean is important to stop the spread of the disease.

Now, when she watches him heal, she still feels the thrill of his magic resonating within her, but it's always overshadowed by worry. About the patients, and about him. Things that used to be simple drain him now. She pulls out a vial of lyrium, but he pushes it away with a warning about the dangers of dependency. Lyrium makes the lines blur, she knows this as well as he does. In this state, he may not be able to stop himself from drawing too deeply on the Fade's tainted gift. She carefully returns the potion on its place on the shelf, and finds a waterskin, makes him drink that instead.

He downs it all in nearly one gulp, and tries to pretend it's enough to refresh him.

"Were you serious, about learning how to do this?" he asks her quietly, at the bed of a young boy who is barely breathing. His skin feels disturbingly hot. She tries to get him to drink, but whatever he manages to swallow, it isn't enough.

Hawke nods, but her throat is suddenly dry. "What if I mess it up? You do it."

"I'm right here with you," he tells her, his hand gently guiding hers.

She can feel the bright pulse of mana, alive, sparking around him and flowing in to mix with hers. Suddenly he doesn't feel like a man on the brink of exhaustion, and she doesn't feel tired at all, with him.

He leads the way through the pathways of the boy's frail body, dives into his blood, finds the shadowy _thickness_ where the illness claws for dominance. She follows, with hesitant footsteps.

But he shows her what to do, where to apply gentle touches, how to probe deeper with tendrils of cleansing magic. How to kindle a fire that chases the darkness away, how to plant a seed that will blossom and allow the child's own immune system to fight. She understands why it's so _difficult_, because it's not intuitive at all. It's not a _battle_, the way she's used to, with a clear winner, or even sides. Their magic simply provides an extra layer of support, enough to turn the tide. A light that spreads against the slow decay, but it's not their decision. They're still intruding in someone else's body, and they can't _force_ the fever to break...

It feels sudden, when Anders pulls her out. She's breathing hard, her heart's beating quickly. But the boy's blankets are soaked with sweat, and his mother thanks them with tears in her eyes. The child's breathing is still shallow, but relaxed, the slow rhythmic pace of dreaming. And when Hawke traces her palm along his skin, she feels only the natural warmth of a human body.

"I did it," she whispers, still not quite believing.

Anders hugs her and laughs, the tension draining from his shoulders.


	17. Sunrise

Hawke blinks her eyes open, and the familiar dark shadows of the clinic cling to her like a blanket.

She rolls over, looking for Anders, but though her eyes sweep the room, back and forth, more than once, he is nowhere to be seen. She hears nothing but the quiet breathing of the clinic's sleeping occupants. She feels comfortable and calm.

She lets her eyelids fall closed again, burrows her face into her pillow.

But a few moments later she rolls onto her back and lets her eyes snap open again.

She's too _awake_, despite the fact that it's still the very, _very_ early part of the morning when every intelligent person is asleep.

Energy buzzes through her blood, under her skin.

She slips off the cot, but keeps the blanket, wrapping it tight around her shoulders as she walks.

The door to the clinic is open, a tiny crack. It often is, but not usually at night. Anders told her that he'd love to keep the door open all the time, but although locked doors make him nervous, they bother him far less than the possibility of templars sneaking in while he's sleeping.

She can feel the cool breeze blowing in from outside. It's rare, that such breezes make it all the way here, where the air is often still and choking. It feels like a promise, the start of something new.

She pushes the door open just a little bit more, so she can slip out. And she's not surprised to see Anders there, a short walk away, where the street dead-ends and opens up to the sky, out from under the claustrophobic overhangs of the city that often feels like it's collapsing on top of them.

The sky is just beginning to lighten, the lightest tinges of gray and blue mixing into the darkness. There are no stars, but the thick clouds swirl and shift their patterns, and she finds herself staring up at them in awe.

"Hawke," Anders murmurs, moving over a bit to give her space to climb up onto a precarious stack of bricks that might once have been part of something.

She smiles. "Do you come out here every morning?" she asks him.

He nods. "I try to."

She understands why. It's the same thing that's pulled her out here, the primal connection that stirs up the mana inside her. It reminds her of crunching through fallen autumn leaves, jumping through her father's footprints, running through the fields in early summer when the grain shoots were just tall enough for her to hide in.

Thick walls and darkened ceilings and heavy blankets may be warm and safe and comfortable. Sleep may be necessary, but it's not _life_.

They're not meant to be confined in windowless cells and decaying city streets. It feels profoundly _wrong_ to be separated from the natural patterns of the world - every fiber of her being protests against it.

Sometimes she spends days in the Undercity, where the sunlight struggles to provide more than a perpetual twilight. Sometimes jobs force her to the Deep Roads, the claustrophobic tunnels and caves of Sundermount, the collapsing holes and hovels where mercenaries hide. And she makes it through, but she _hates_ every minute of it. A tiny voice at the back of her mind screams at her, the loss of connection to the primal forces that give her her power is like a physical ache, a perpetual sense of something really, _really_ important that's missing, until she can get outside again. Until she sees the sky.

No wonder Anders comes out here. No wonder he ran away from the Tower. She's not surprised that he risked everything to break out of that prison. Honestly, what surprises her is how many mages _don't_. She has no idea how they manage to push down that call, the _need_ for nature, wind and rain and light. She can't do it. It chokes her when she tries, crushes her a little at a time. No templar's punishment can be worse than that constant nagging pain.

She reaches for Anders and he pulls her close, holds her tightly as the day gradually wakes around them.

It doesn't feel confining, because it feels like he's _part of her_.

Their mana swirls together in sharp stabbing pulses, overlapping and merging as it reaches out to create a bond, a shared link. Like magnetism, like family.

It's not something they _do_, it's not conscious. It's what they _are_.

When the darkness gives way to bright oranges and yellows and reds, it feels like magic.


	18. Oddly Freeing

**Notes: **Taking liberties with the Thrask's daughter situation. Do I believe she'd lash out with magic against slavers attempting to kidnap her, and that it would result in her death? Absolutely. I am 100% behind that. Do I believe she'd instantaneously turn into an abomination? Nope. No way. Abominations will show up rarely if at all in this story. Despite what the game may have you think, I cannot imagine there'd really be dozens of them just popping up willy-nilly in the streets of Kirkwall. And I figured Hawke and Anders didn't have any particular reason to stumble across that confrontation so... they didn't. All they know about it is what Thrask tells them. Because I like the idea that not _everything_ important that happens in the city directly involves them.

* * *

><p>"So when you talked about the Mage Underground, I somehow didn't think you meant it quite so literally," Hawke gripes.<p>

It's a sign of how seriously Anders is taking this that he doesn't give her a sarcastic response. He doesn't give her any proper response at all, actually, just a sort of noncommittal muttering as he nervously scans the branching passageways of the Undercity sewers.

She knows exactly how wary he is of getting anywhere _near_ the Gallows.

It's why she refuses to let him do it alone, even though he repeatedly insisted that he didn't want her putting herself in danger. She ignored him, and followed him until he gave up on trying to push her away.

They are here because Anders has contacts. People he'd known in Ferelden, in the Circle, who have access to mages in and out of templar control, who slip messages and hope through the cracks in the system.

"The templars like to _think_ they have all mages properly leashed, but when has that _ever_ been true?" Athenril's words, one of the first things she'd ever said, one of the _only_ things Hawke can unconditionally agree with.

They don't have her. They don't have Anders either.

They _never_ had Anders, even when they thought they did. He slipped out of their hands, time and time again. Now he's ready to stop running, to stand still long enough to catch others when they make that jump.

He wishes he'd had somebody to do that for him. If he had, maybe he would have gotten to this point much sooner. Maybe the trip would not have been such a messy, painful one.

Time drags on.

Anders twitches, paces. Hawke drums her fingers in quick beats on the mildew-slick stone walls that surround them.

She's almost ready to give up, to go back, to admit that hope is for losers and she's smarter than this, when she sees them.

Just broad strokes of color first - Circle robes in bright blues and yellows. And then she sees _them_. Messy hair in tangled knots. Pale skin. Frightened eyes. These are the people they promised to help. Innocent kids just stupid enough to risk everything for a chance at fresh air and freedom.

There are three of them, two boys and a girl. The oldest looks to be about Carver's age, the others maybe a few years younger. Fifteen? Sixteen?

The right age for a Harrowing, Anders had told her. It's probably why they chose to run.

One shot. One last chance.

She notices as they stumble and clutch each other, fearful but determined, that one boy has a black eye, that the girl's robes are ripped and torn.

Anger flares up in the pit of her stomach. She channels the energy into movement, hurrying the kids ahead of her through the darkened path. Going back the way they came, but it feels different now, like she's never been here before.

Anders follows, distracted.

With his memories... this must be a thousand times worse.

Hawke turns back, to check on him, just in time to see him freeze. His eyes widen with panic, dart from point to point. He breathing changes to an uneven hiccup.

And she stumbles, torn between waiting for him and _knowing_, feeling in the pounding of her heart, the reason he stopped.

She knows before she hears the clank of armored footsteps, the swish of weapons, the echo of voices.

Templars.

And they are caught underground, in narrow tunnels with choking dead-ends and darkness. Too easy to get lost. Not open enough to run.

But she tries anyway.

She grabs Anders' hand and pulls him along behind her, pushing the runaways ahead. They're so young. They remind her of Bethany.

They remind her of _herself_, because although she feels like the world gave up on her a long long time ago, she can remember her childhood with perfect clarity. She remembers what running was like. It wasn't that long ago.

She slips into the familiar pattern, the dangerous game of hide and seek. But it isn't enough, not when the pursuing footsteps grow louder, closer.

If they were normal kids they could just give up, laughing, knowing they'd had fun but they're tired now and they want to do something else.

They've _never_ had that option.

She presses herself against the wall, protected by the natural curve of the corridor. And she forces herself to look.

Their hunter is a lone man, one templar.

Anders moves to put himself in front of the group. If the man sees them, he will see Anders first. He will _attack_ Anders first.

"Better the death of one man than so many innocents," Anders tells her. His voice is quiet, so as not to be overheard, but it is hard and angry.

And it's true. And they could catch him unprepared.

But Hawke shakes her head, because she's _watching_ the templar.

And although he must be aware of their presence, he's made no move to attack them, hasn't even drained the mana from the area.

He must _know_ how outnumbered he is. He must realize he has no chance of winning this fight.

Templars maintain their power over the mages only by ensuring that the numbers game stays in their favor. Anders and her father both have always told her this.

So why is this one here alone?

"I sent the others on a false path," the man says, cautiously, his eyes sweeping through the area, but coming to rest _on them_.

Hawke sighs, steps out of the shadows. It gains them nothing to pretend. He knows exactly where they are.

"I had hoped to resolve this without bloodshed," the templar tells her. "Yet those men intend to slay these runaways, and they have the Knight Commander's authority behind them. Even if I thought to bring them in peaceably... I do not know..."

"If they'd survive," Anders says evenly. Hawke spins around. She hadn't realized he'd stepped up beside her. But of course he did. "You think Meredith would have them executed on general principal."

The templar does not respond. He doesn't have to.

Hawke sneaks a quick look back through the sewers. The kids are long gone. She can't even hear their footsteps anymore. Smart enough to keep moving. She never doubted it.

"They must know it, too," Anders mutters. "They won't surrender... _we_ won't surrender."

And as he says it, the realization hits him with sudden force: he's never done this before. He'd _always_ let the templars take him. He'd never fought.

He'd told himself it was because he _couldn't_. But what if it was only because he'd been too afraid to try?

He glances at Hawke, feels the mana lighting up, just under her skin, ready to break. She _wants_ to fight.

They balance on a razor's edge.

"Why help us?" Hawke asks, in a breathless whisper. Afraid of the answer.

What if it's a trick, a trap?

But isn't it more dangerous to ask him to admit to this secret assistance out loud, in words? Maybe if he doesn't talk to them he can pretend he's not actually doing it. What if, by asking, she is only giving him a chance to change his mind?

The templar gives her a sad smile. "I know well the choices the world forces upon you mages." He sighs, and he suddenly looks weary and old. "I wish more than anything that it were not so, but I can no longer lie to myself, deny what the Circle has become."

His eyes flick to Anders, and Hawke sees a flicker of... _something_, there. Does he _know_ his history, that Anders is a wanted fugitive? How much danger are they in?

"It _is_ a prison," he admits. "A place so mired in fear and pain that many choose death rather than willingly allowing themselves to be trapped within its walls."

Anders holds the man's gaze, but Hawke feels the way his fingers tighten on hers. His eyes widen, just the slightest bit. And he exhales, softly. "I... never would have dreamed I'd hear a templar agree with me," he says carefully.

The templar returns his attention to Hawke. "I am not the only one who has such thoughts, such... questions. No matter how the Chantry works to persuade otherwise, the Maker's wishes are not easily discerned. There are others within the Order who know just what I do: that mages need _protection_, not punishment. We are meant to serve, not enslave. And for the sake of my family, I have made an alliance with yours."

"Carver," Hawke breathes. He'd said he'd joined the templars _for her_... is this what he meant? The barest trace of a nod from the red-haired templar is hardly enough to confirm it.

"I cannot advocate smuggling mages out of the Gallows. It is not a question of fear."

"Of course it is!" Anders spits, but Hawke squeezes his hand tightly enough that he bites back his anger.

And something darkens in the man's eyes, a deep truth, a secret. "You barely cling to survival in Darktown," he says to Anders. "And you know as well as I do that the common people of this city tolerate your presence only because your usefulness overpowers their hatred and their greed. For now."

"I'd help them anyway," the mage replies harshly. "It's damn clear no one else will."

"I have no doubt that this is true," the templar concedes. "Still, your good intentions and your _luck_ aside, there are many mages who attempt to flee the Circle only to find themselves caught in darker traps."

"You're talking about slavers," Hawke says, unnecessarily. "Like the ones who took Feynriel."

"Slavers, yes. And others. Criminals. Those who prey on the helpless and desperate." He holds her gaze until she almost breaks away. But she won't let him see her shaken. "There is more than one way to be enslaved, Hawke."

"Fuck you!" she snaps. "You don't know anything about me!"

"I know that you are alive," he murmurs. "That, for what little it may be worth, my decision here now will keep you alive. I could not do the same for my daughter."

"Your daughter," Anders repeats.

The templar nods, a smile brightening his face. "Yes. Her name was Olivia, and she was a mage. An apostate." He sighs, heavy with grief and responsibility, the smile wiped away as quickly as it had appeared, leaving nothing behind but grim determination. "And though I have tried, often and desperately, to convince myself that hiding her was the wrong decision, I... cannot. Go. I will hold off your pursuers."

Anders gives him a short nod, a gesture of gratitude. And then he follows the man's advice.

"He's a good man, for a templar," he admits to Hawke, as they scramble out from the trap door that opens out near his clinic, where the three newly-freed mages will be waiting.

She agrees.


	19. Strays

"What are you doing?"

Anders barely stops himself from jumping, and that makes him angry with himself. He bites back a curse at the milk sloshing over the edge of the saucer, now dribbling it's way down his arm.

The boy should not have been able to sneak up on him this way, and if he did... he certainly should know better than to be intimidated.

Children hang around the clinic all the time, he's gotten used to their presence and even their constant questions. The only thing different about this one is the robes he still wears, marking him as an apprentice of the Circle.

"I'll find you some other clothes," he tells the kid. After tromping through the sewers, the boy needs something clean. And, preferably, something that doesn't scream to every random passerby that he's a runaway mage.

"Kaden."

Anders nods. "Kaden," he repeats.

He knows how important it is to have a name to cling to, some marker of identity and personhood. Likely the templars had referred to him only as "boy" or "mage" or any of a dozen less-complimentary terms, if they were forced to acknowledge him at all.

Kaden has the dusky skin of Rivain, hair the color of chocolate spilling over his face in a tangled mess, and a sullen expression.

And the dark shadow of a black eye.

"You deserve that one?" Anders asks him.

Kaden shrugs, but his eyes keep darting to the girl sitting a few feet away, nibbling on a bit of cheese Hawke had found for her.

The girl who, with wheat-blonde hair spilling down to her shoulders, even _looks_ like Melly.

"Templars were harassing her," Kaden says softly. "I just wanted them to stop."

He shifts away, won't look at Anders anymore. He stares at the floor.

Anders feels the mana stirring within the boy, in violent pulses. His own power hums in sympathetic vibrations.

Kaden keeps it contained. A trained response, one Anders knows all too well. You swallow the anger, the hatred, the fear. You hold it inside because letting anyone see it only invites further punishment.

He recognizes the hunch of the boy's shoulders, ready to curl away from a blow.

"It was stupid," Kaden mutters. "I just made it worse."

"You got her out of there," Anders reminds him gently. He wants to reach out. His arm moves toward the boy's shoulder, but he stops himself. He knows how _he'd_ respond to an uninvited touch in this state. Kaden is barely coping with this uncertain new world as it is.

As if to remind him of exactly why he should know better than to make assumptions, Kaden shakes his head. "No," he says sharply. "She got _me_ out."

Before Anders can think of anything helpful to say to that, the boy has crouched down to greet the visitor lured here by the offering of milk he'd just set down, a scrawny black kitten with bright eyes that track both of the humans warily before deciding that this free meal is worth much more of its attention than they are.

Kaden reaches out to rest a gentle hand on the kitten's back, and he looks up, and smiles, at Anders.

"I think he likes you," the older mage says.

"I've never... we don't have pets in the Circle."

Anders smiles, but inside he is haunted yet again by the continued evidence of the hostility of the Gallows. At least in Ferelden, the templars had let him hold onto the cat that followed him around begging for food, even when it slipped through the bars into his solitary cell.

"Technically, I don't have pets either," he points out. "Just strays that let me take care of them for a little while."

Hawke walks over with a pile of very worn, but clean and comfortable-looking clothes.

Anders gives her a sheepish smile. "I was gonna get there."

She shrugs as she hands the pile to Kaden, and watches the cat lick at the little bit of milk remaining on the saucer. "You were busy."

"I haven't seen this little guy in a while," Anders tells her. "I was a little afraid someone may have gotten desperate enough to eat him."

Kaden's eyes widen. "Really?"

"He's joking," Hawke assures the kid. Though when she glances at Anders out of the corner of her eye, he's wearing a completely straight face. "I think," she amends.

Kaden suddenly seems to be in a great hurry to take the clothes and head deeper into the clinic to change. But as Hawke watches, he stops to converse with his friends. The trio of no-longer-apprentices crowd close together and shoot nervous glances in their direction. She gives them what she hopes is a reassuring smile.

"What happens to them now?" she murmurs to Anders. "It's dangerous to keep them together, isn't it?"

He shakes his head, and squeezes her hand. "It's never safer to be alone."

The kitten gives them a surprisingly loud meow of agreement and curls up on top of his boot. Though this will make walking problematic, he watches the cat with a lazy smile. "I've got a friend who'll help them out of the city. After that... they've got the whole wide world, Hawke. I won't tell them where to go."

"You really think they'll be alright?"

"As alright as any mage _can_ be. As alright as _we_ are."

Hawke watches the kitten yawn sleepily and nuzzle against Anders' bootlaces.

She nods. "They'll be alright."


	20. Amell

"Your mom told me again that she wishes you'd come see her more often."

"You talk to my _mother_?"

He flinches, and her heartbeat speeds up in her chest.

She still doesn't understand him sometimes - okay, a _lot_ of the time - but the fact that he might be angry with her, or hurt because of something that _she_ did... hurts. It feels _wrong_, it makes her feel guilty and confused. It makes her want to fix it.

"Not on _purpose_, or anything," he mutters. "It's not like I'm _tattling_ on you. I just ran into her in the Lowtown market."

He still won't look at her, but he plays with her hair, combing his fingers through the tangles. She winces as he pulls at some of the more stubborn knots - even as a little kid, taking care of her hair was never high on her priority list.

"Your mother just wants to spend time with you," Anders says quietly. "She loves you. Don't throw that away. It's... it's an unbelievable gift."

"You love me too," she whispers back. And she realizes as she says it that it's not a question.

"Yes," he tells her.

A simple declaration that envelops the ridiculous swirl of complicated emotion and confusion that they stumble through.

But they stumble through it together.

She realizes she hasn't walked away or left him alone for a long time, that she feels a sense of... _emptiness_, when he's not with her for whatever reason. And that when she comes back to the clinic after these increasingly rarer times when she goes somewhere without him, he always pulls her close to him and holds her until his worry melts away.

And she appreciates it despite the fact that she tells him every time not to worry about her.

She circles her fingers around his wrist, to let him know that she understands what he's saying and she doesn't want to fight.

But her mother's spent a lifetime wishing for a perfect daughter that she'll never have.

"I'm not this person she wants me to be, this Kirkwall noble," she tells him bitterly. "I don't _want_ to be that person. Did you know she wants me to get _married_? She's trying to find a suitable husband. What a blasted hypocrite!"

Anders tries to reassure her with a smile. "Nobody's talking about addressing wedding invitations yet. At least as far as I'm aware. It couldn't hurt to just check out the house a little, surely?"

She nods.

Because if he can follow her into the Deep Roads, with his help she can certainly handle a meal with her mother.

They access the estate through the basement tunnels that connect near his clinic, and she grins at him. "I'm sneaking into my own house. Is this _wrong_?"

She stumbles only a little bit over the words, but it's still clear to him that she doesn't feel like the house is hers, that there's a reason she feels more comfortable skittering around in the cellars and storage rooms than in the wide-open ballrooms and bedrooms upstairs, filled with expensive things.

He leads her up to the above-ground rooms where civilized people live, and they can pretend to _be_ civilized people for a little while.

And as his footsteps echo on the heavy landings and wide stairways, he tries to imagine Melly living here.

He wonders if she was different, in this place, as a little girl. He tires to think of her as carefree, quick to laugh, able to run and play without worry.

He'd seen snatches of that girl in the Tower, especially in the beginning.

But by the end... fear took its toll. She was _always_ serious, guarded. She kept her feelings locked under icy shields.

And he couldn't even blame her, because trust was dangerous and emotional attachments made you vulnerable.

She was the best friend he ever had, and what did he give her but someone else to worry about, something else to be afraid of?

He realizes as he explores the dusty, empty rooms of the sprawling estate just how little he knows about this family that people leave behind. Running from them, like Leandra, or pushed away, like Rhyanon.

Now, there's almost nothing left.

Melly had remembered far more than most of them in the Circle, especially given her young age - barely seven when she'd arrived at Kinloch Hold. But now Anders realizes that those memories he was so jealous of are only the tiniest of scraps. Fragments of color, sound, texture. They don't tell him anything about what the Amell family was really like. There's nothing in them to explain why Rhyanon Amell of Kirkwall ended up in Ferelden's Tower instead of this city's Gallows. Not that he's complaining about that!

She'd admitted to him once that she remembered her mother crying, fitting herself into the woman's arms trying to make her feel better. But she doesn't have any more of those pieces - she couldn't remember if it had anything to do with her, if it had happened just before the templars took her or much sooner. For all the memories she clung to, Melly had never had any idea whether her family even missed her when she was gone.

Leandra is little help in this regard. What she knows of the family and this city comes from before Rhyanon was even _born_. She knows nothing more about the Hero of Ferelden than what the stories say.

It's up to Anders to remember the little girl in the apprentice dorms, and the sarcastic teenager with a wicked bluff in poker.

And the young woman who forced herself to learn to heal even though it was never something that came easily to her. She pushed herself through long nights, exhausted and drained, working to figure it out, to _help him_.

Nothing he can do will ever be enough to pay her back. She saved his life more times than he wants to admit and he ran away from her rather than confront it. There's no word in any language to describe how much he owes her.

He runs his fingers over the painted symbol on a shield hanging up on the wall - the family crest. He wonders if she'd feel any connection here, or if she'd be just one more Amell glad enough to leave this place behind.

He watches Hawke, tromping slightly ahead, stopping here and there to explore the musty boxes that remain. She keeps casting sidelong glances back at him, but it's obvious that nothing pulls her forward except idle curiosity. Nothing clicks for her in this place either.

He remembers what Rhyanon had said to him, one night out in the rain outside Vigil's Keep - she will never feel safe within stone walls. The estate is _huge_, just like the one in Amaranthine, but the walls are thick and heavy, and they feel claustrophobic and confining. He knows Rhyanon could never feel at home here.

He wonders if Hawke ever will.

He wonders if he wants her to.


	21. Safe

It's when they run out of things to explore in the dusty, mildewed, empty, and forgotten rooms of the estate and return to the relatively small percentage of house that Leandra has claimed, cleaned, and recoccupied that Anders remembers _why_ people prefer this type of place to Darktown, backstabbing nobles and politicians aside.

The bedroom Hawke has given up to sleep on collapsing cots with moth-eaten blankets that smell of vomit no matter how many times they're washed, for example, is approximately the size of the entire ship he took to get here from Ferelden. And the bathtub - there's a bathtub! Just for her! - he's certain could hold the ocean they crossed.

But when he points these things out to Hawke, she only shrugs. It's obvious she's uncomfortable here, almost... _embarrassed_? And afraid to touch anything. She's dwarfed by the size of this place. It makes her seem small, young, lost and vulnerable.

And he is suddenly struck by a memory - a young girl, wide-eyed and trembling but stubbornly determined not to cry. Swallowed by the vast grandeur of the main entrance hall of Kinloch Hold. He didn't even realize he _remembered_ that, the first time he'd seen Rhyanon, _weeks_ before they really met.

He'd _hated_ that room because the acoustics of it were such that he could _feel_ the gates slamming shut and locking, echoing and reverberating and surrounding him, the sound clinging and following him long after it should have faded away.

He's glad when Hawke insists that they go somewhere else, gives him an excuse to keep moving.

The house is a maze - all winding staircases and endless corridors. The mabari leads the way, sniffing and barking and nudging at doorways that seem interesting.

Hawke follows close behind the dog, gently pushing open the door to the room he's chosen this time.

"Wow," Anders breathes as they take a few steps into the small but comfortable library.

There are only a couple of bookshelves, but they are crammed full of books. And a library of _any_ size is rare outside of a Chantry.

He reaches out and snags one of the books off the shelf, not bothering to check its title or cover. He just wants to flip through the pages, savor the feeling of old parchment under his fingers, the way the colors of the ink fade and bleed, the _smell_ - like warmth and dust and old things.

"One of the few things I _do_ miss about the Circle," he murmurs.

He tries to remember the last time he read a book. It's not something he _does_ in Darktown, and there was even less opportunity when he was on the run.

Amaranthine? Probably.

He's got plenty of stories memorized - long passages from every kind of book. But he doesn't like calling them to mind because of the _reason_ he has them memorized. Repeated recitations in a solitary cell, talking just to hear _any_ voice, even if it was his own.

_Snap out of it, moron!_

He glances down at the book in his hand because it gives him an excuse not to look at Hawke. He can _feel_ her watching him. He doesn't even have to look to see her worried frown.

He shakes it off, smiles. "Adventures of the Black Fox." He used to read it to the kids in the apprentice dorms, much to the chagrin of the Chantry people and the less fun older mages, who figured it was inappropriate for innocent ears, what with all the blood and sex and dashing heroism. Which, of course, only made them love it more.

"I used to love it when my father read to me," Hawke says quietly. "Just hearing his voice, I think. It made me feel... safe."

At their feet, the dog barks in happy agreement.

"I should take this to the clinic. Read it to the kids. You think I could?"

"Anders, as far as I'm concerned, if this stuff really is all mine now... it's pretty much yours too. Take _all_ the books if you want. Or you can come in here and read all day long, if you feel like it."

He nods, imagining what it might be like to curl up in that huge stuffed armchair, with a warm fire crackling and dancing in the fireplace. To allow himself to _really_ relax, to drift into imaginary stories where the good guy always wins... and to do it with Hawke nearby, close enough to touch, to hold.

In the Circle, his comfort in the library was always temporary and shallow. The templars were _always_ close, and there were those who took any excuse to harass him specifically, _waited_ for him to be alone...

But this place is different.

This place is _safe_.

"I might take you up on that offer," he tells Hawke, reaching for her hand.

She smiles, aware maybe even more than Anders is that she's never seen him this... _calm_, before.

"Good," she replies, snuggling against his chest, letting his arm wrap around her, warm and comfortable and protective.

Maybe there is something to this nobility thing after all.


	22. How To Boil Water

**Notes: **The just for fun Soulmates Thanksgiving special (yes, written in the kitchen in between cooking and eating. Yes, based on real life in many, many ways).

* * *

><p>The bed is... nice, Hawke thinks. Very... warm. And soft. Comfortable enough to get lost in.<p>

But the room is too quiet, and empty, and really it's only the dog that's declared the bed just as much his as hers that lets her relax here.

She misses Anders, and the clinic, and the only reason she's not there right now is because her mother wants her home for this giant dinner she's putting on for the families she hated when she was a kid. She's here because Anders wants her to be here, because he's _right_ about family being important. She sighs.

If they were real nobility they'd have a whole kitchen staff to cook for them, but they're not that far gone yet. As she slips on a bathrobe and tromps down the stairs, she debates whether that's something she's happy about or not.

"Morning, sunshine," Hawke blinks.

"Anders? What're you doing here?"

"Making sure you don't try to make a run for it," he says with a grin. "That's my department." He hands her a mug, full of tea, hot and... _amazing_. Caffeine and sugar. And Anders.

"I love you," she says, inhaling the beverage and somehow not choking despite it's near-boiling temperature.

"I know. Anyway, that day I met your mom in the market, this is what she was shopping for. And she figured it was as good an opportunity as any to teach me how to cook."

"You need lessons?"

It's a little surprising to her, still, to realize that there's _anything_ Anders doesn't know how to do. He's the one that teaches her, after all.

"I grew up in the Circle, eating in the common dining room. Cooking a meal for myself was never really a top priority. And after that, I was on the run, or in the Wardens... a lot of army food. Ick."

She smiles, and realizes that she really _hasn't_ ever seen him cook. In the clinic, he eats stuff like apples, bread, cheese, _soup_ if he's feeling adventurous. Nothing that it's possible to screw up. Nothing that it takes any time to prepare either, not when he's got so many other ways to fill the hours in the day, sick people to take care of.

Not that she's _much_ better. She's a disaster in the kitchen unless her mother is standing over her shoulder (another reason to avoid it as much as possible).

"So then, you're here to... _what_? Stand around and look pretty while us womenfolk do the real work?"

He snorts. "Hawke, you hardly act like any 'womenfolk' I've ever seen. Besides, I said that I never cooked a _meal_ for myself, not that I've never been in a kitchen." He cracks a smile. "I got put on kitchen duty far, _far_ more often than most. Bastards used to give me the jobs no one else wanted, of course. Dishes, obviously. And chopping onions and all that kind of thing..." he trails off briefly, remembering how one of his _ever-present_ templar guards _loved_ that, got a kick out of getting in his face and taunting him about how he'd make sure to _really_ make him cry as soon as he could. It took all his self-control not to haul off and clock the guy right in his ugly face, which was, of course, exactly the point. They _wanted_ to bait him into giving them an excuse... He shakes it off. Old memories, long time ago. They hardly matter anymore. "Anyway, after a while I realized that kitchen duty got you outside a fair bit. To collect water, and stuff from the garden, taking out the trash. I started _volunteering_. Course I knew better than to look _too_ eager. If they knew I liked it, they'd have found... other ways of keeping me out of trouble."

"I like you better when you're in trouble," she tells him, and he realizes _yet again_ that this is why he loves her. Because she's not dense enough not to realize that he's got darker stories behind that smile, but she _doesn't_ ask. Because she understands as well as he does that there's nothing at all to gain by dwelling on it, ever.

"You and me both. Still... hand me a knife and point me in the right direction."

"Dining room's through there. Feel free to stab as many of these pretentious assholes as you think you can. And fireball the rest."

"You're adorable when you're cranky," he tells her with a gentle kiss. "I'll go ask your mother what she wants us to do."

"She really likes you," Hawke says, in awe.

"Of course she does. I'm naturally charming."

In the end, they spend more time just hanging out, talking and laughing, than being allowed to ruin much of the meal Leandra is preparing. She keeps their hands busy chopping lots of stuff, and they wait around for lots of pots to start boiling. There is a minor incident when Anders burns... something, and another when one of the pots boils over and Hawke can't figure out how to make it stop. Shortly after that, they're kicked out of the kitchen entirely, to neither's disappointment.

"Yep. That's cooking pretty much just how I remember it," Anders sighs, putting his arm around her as they snuggle in the huge chair in the library. "Although the company's much better."

"So then," Hawke mumbles, burrowing against his chest and letting her eyes drift closed. "We never do it again?"

"Deal," he agrees.


	23. Don't Worry, Be Happy

They survive the dinner.

Anders apparently _is_ naturally charming, enough that the nobles laugh at his jokes and... well, they don't _relax_, not when they seem to be in competition to see who among them has the largest stick up the ass, but their smiles seem less forced. And there are plenty of young (and not-so-young) women making no secret of slobbering after him and why is she _jealous_? She never cares when Isabela does it.

But Isabela... is different. She's a friend, she does it with _everybody_.

And she knows Anders, what he is, _who_ he is. She doesn't stare at him like a piece of meat... wait, yes, she does. Okay revise - she _does_ - but then she actually bothers to _notice_ and _care_ when he's upset - like he definitely _is_ when he hears a couple of the nobles practically giving Meredith a standing ovation for the fine job she's doing "managing" the city.

Hawke sneaks a glance at her mother, who has on some vapid smile, and she feels like she wants to hit something.

What would Daddy think if he could see her now, fawning over these men who stand around _laughing_ while they basically say that mages _deserve_ the horrible abuses that they suffer under the the authority of the Knight Commander and the Chantry, and sure, maybe they can pretend they _don't know_ (although, come on, it's _obvious_ to anyone with eyes that the Gallows has _never stopped_ being a prison), but her mother _knows_.

And Meredith has ordered more than one public execution for people accused of "aiding apostates." But for now they're just Lowtown commoners, so who cares right?

Bile rises up in her throat and she realizes she's shaking.

Anders must notice too, because he deftly excuses himself from some imitation of a conversation with two squealing bimbos and finds her huddled in a corner. He puts an arm around her and whispers calming words into her ear, but she doesn't hear them. She's too busy staring at her mother with glaring hatred. If she's willing to nod her head, say _nothing_ to these idiots... it hits her like a punch to the gut.

"Does she believe them, Anders?" Not all the way, of course not. But on _some level_, deep inside... is she like all the other mothers, like _Anders' mother_, who shipped their kids to the Circle because it was _easier_? If it hadn't been for Daddy, would she have done the same? "She _doesn't want me_."

Who can blame her? Even _now_, hiding her is still dangerous. Hawke wonders if the only thing protecting Leandra them is Carver manipulating things behind the scenes. Life _would_ be easier if she'd never been born.

Anders hugs her tightly. "Of course she wants you. She's keeping you safe, even now. Not drawing suspicion by seeming overly sympathetic to mages. You see it, don't you?"

Hawke nods. But she still can't help feeling betrayed.

"Actions speak far louder than words, Hawke. She sacrificed everything to give you a _childhood_. A dangerous and uncertain one, true, but you survived it. And every day I see you... if I could, I would thank her. I know what the Circle's like, I know... I know what it would have done to you. I see you smile, and I am _so grateful_ that this _joy_, this _freedom_ to live a passionate life, without fear, still shines in you. _Everything you are_ reminds me why I still bother to get up every morning."

That freezes her. She'd never thought of it like that, that he would see so much in her. So much that he _deserves_, _so much more_ than she does.

"What if...?"

And she's not sure what she's asking... what if he's wrong, about her, that she's someone that people _want_? Because she knows she isn't, she just got _really_ _lucky_. What if she _hadn't_ had this incredible gift? What if he _had_?

It _hurts her_ so badly, to even _imagine_ what they must have done to him that still shakes him to his core even now, when the wrong word hits a memory. She sees the haunted darkness in his eyes, and she wonders how he can _still_ find the ability to laugh and joke the way he does. It makes her feel a little guilty actually, like what right does she have to complain about anything?

He squeezes her hand and gives her a gentle kiss.

"If she'd sent you to the Circle, you'd have survived that too. It's who you are, Hawke. Too stubborn not to survive." He draws slow gentle designs on her arm as they watch the party guests standing around pretending like they're enjoying themselves. "And don't worry about me," he whispers, a few heartbeats later. She frowns, looking up at him, and he smiles. "You're no good at hiding it. I can tell when you're worried about me."

"I'm _always_ worried about you."

"Well, there you go then. I'm not broken, Hawke. Especially not with you around. Although I'm suddenly feeling far less like playing nicely with these... people. I don't know how _anyone_ survives Hightown, honestly. It's all liars and assholes. Least in Darktown they'll be upfront about stabbing you in the back. What do you think, care for a _real_ drink?"

"I'll need more than one," she retorts, and Anders laughs. A real laugh, she notes. Not the play-acting he'd been doing with Milly and Frilly.

He steers her to the Hanged Man, where it's much more their type of party. Isabela loads them up with mug after mug of truly terrible ale and Varric tries and fails to get them to tell stories that they won't share even when they _are_ ridiculously drunk. And Anders _sucks_ at cards.

"No wonder the skirted men caught you all the time," Varric teases. "You literally could not bluff to save your life."

Hawke tenses up, and tries to be subtle about checking up on Anders' reaction.

But he just catches her eye across the table and mouths "_Do not worry about me._"

And then he finishes off his drink and rolls his eyes at Varric. And loses another hand.

And she relaxes.


	24. Identity

**Notes: **It still feels unnatural for me to call Hawke anything but "Hawke" when I write even though she has a first name, Callin (short a) - and yeah, it's pretty close to "Cailan" but it's been my default character name since college, when I was playing WoW and KOTOR and all that stuff. And I had _no way_ of knowing when I punched it up in DA2 that it would wind up _mattering_ in fanfic!  
>Anyway, it was starting to feel awkward that Anders wouldn't call her by her actual name, so I finally felt the need to hash out an in-story reason for that.<p>

* * *

><p>They spend what little remains of the night together in the clinic - <em>home<em>.

Hawke wakes up to feel Anders breathing, warm and gentle, against the back of her neck. His arm drapes across her body, holding her tightly, but it makes her feel good, safe and protected and... _loved_. She snuggles against him, pulling him closer the way she would a blanket on a cold night.

It helps that they're sleeping on a cot that should not be big enough to hold two people, but somehow they manage. But they have to cling to one another or one of them will end up on the ground. At first they'd avoided sharing a bed because of that, each of them assuming that the other would want space.

She doesn't remember exactly when they'd gotten over that stupid idea. It had involved a nightmare, his or hers, she doesn't know anymore, but they'd come together for comfort and woken up entwined in each other's arms and it had taken a _long time_ to find any motivation to disentangle themselves.

And that night they hadn't even _tried_ pretending that they'd go back to sleeping alone.

She tries to shift out of the bed without waking him, but it doesn't work. It never does. He grabs her close and nuzzles her close and whispers "Morning, Hawke."

"Mmm," she mutters, still half-asleep and not sure whether she should be grateful for this excuse he's giving her not to wake up or annoyed that he doesn't seem inclined to let her go seek out breakfast. More the second, she realizes, and she pushes out of his arms.

She finishes throwing together a plate of bread and fruit for them (still no cooking, as per their agreement), and tries to decide whether the water inside their kettle is too old to be useful for tea, finally figuring that boiling it another time might actually make it _safer_ than anything new she goes to collect.

"You still call me Hawke," she realizes, wondering as she does so why it suddenly _matters_. Her mind drifts to weird places, idle curiosities, when she's in the kitchen. She supposes this is better than that morning she'd spent trying to figure out exactly _what_ was going on in that drawing Isabela had left behind on the bar, because it didn't seem physically _possible_... _dammit!_

"Why?" she asks.

Anders. Focus on _Anders_. Not Isabela's drawings and seriously what was that about an 'electricity thing'? Could they _try_ that? _Dammit!_

Anders finishes pulling a clean shirt over his head and turns back to her, completely unaware of what's going on in her head and she's not sure if she's relieved or disappointed about that.

"Because it just... feels right, I guess? It's what everybody calls you. You've never told me to stop."

"But you do know my actual name?"

"Callin. I've never heard anyone use it but your mother, and I know you better than to think reminding you of your mother is a good idea. Not to mention..." he teases, glancing pointedly at the bed still covered with a tangle of sheets and mismatched quilts "_other_ reasons why I don't want you associating me with your mother."

She shoves him away playfully and his grin grows even larger. "Do you... want me to stop?"

"Only if you want to... I wouldn't mind. But..."

"You like Hawke."

"Yeah. It's..."

"It's yours," he says, and she nods. "The name you built for yourself, that _everyone_ recognizes. I understand. Callin's the little girl you left behind in Ferelden. Hawke is who you _are_."

He steals her breath away again, she finds herself wondering over and over how he can just _know_ these things that she can't even put into words. She reaches out for him and tangles her fingers in his and just appreciates his presence, solid and stable and everything she never thought she'd find.

She almost doesn't want to ruin it with words, but she blows out a soft sigh, as he patters his fingers like raindrops on her back.

_The little girl she left behind in Ferelden..._

"It reminds me of my father," she tells him. "We never got to lay him to rest properly, you know. The templars... left his body to rot in the field where they killed him. We couldn't go and retrieve it without drawing suspicion, and the Chantry wouldn't ever give an apostate a final blessing or a funeral service. Not that he'd have _wanted_ one, but... I think there ought to be something standing in the world to remember him. Even if it's just me."

"He'd be proud of you. Hawke."

She smiles, as Anders hugs her closer and she _never_ wants to move, she'll stay in his arms forever.

"You know Anders isn't my given name either," he says softly. "It's just what the templars called me."

She pulls up short, shifting around to look at him.

"I never knew that. What _is_ your real name?"

"I dunno. I don't remember anymore. It doesn't matter really. Anders is who I am now. It may have been just a throwaway word to them, because they needed _something_, but I claimed it. It's more real to me now than whatever I might have been called before they got their hands on me. This is the name they'll remember, because it's the one I used when I fought them."

"You know that's... pretty much exactly what Fenris told me? That even though he knows Fenris is just something Danarius picked, he doesn't want anybody to call him anything else."

Anders snorts. "Yeah, well. Don't tell him he's got anything in common with a _mage_. He might react... poorly."

"He hasn't turned us in yet, you know. And Maker knows, he's had plenty of chances. He hasn't even... snarled at you recently."

"And he likes you because you actually _like_ that expensive wine he likes to waste," Anders concedes. "Just don't go expecting us to swap friendship bracelets and sing campfire songs any time soon."

"Oh, perish the thought."

Anders laughs and reluctantly pulls himself away from her, though he still doesn't let go of her hand. "I suppose we ought to do something productive with our day."

"Heal the sick and downtrodden, single-handedly save the city, maybe kill a dragon or two?" Hawke suggests.

"Yeah, and if you could stop by the market for a few things on your way home, that'd be great."

"Oh _hell_ no. If I'm going to do something stupid like instigate a fight with a dragon, you're gonna be right there with me. And _you_ can pay for whatever you want at the market on the way back."

"I'd never have it any other way, love."


	25. Shiny and Subversive

"Here, I got you something. It's shiny _and_ subversive. I thought you'd like it."

Anders reaches out on reflex to catch the metallic object flying toward him. He snags it easily, and inhales sharply as he realizes what he's holding.

"This is a Tevinter Chantry amulet. Do you want to get me killed? It's sacrilege to be caught with one of those."

Hawke knows that, of course. Knowing which laws to not get caught breaking is fairly essential to survival for any apostate.

"Damn. Probably shouldn't have nicked it from Fenris' junk then. We could've been rid of him."

She watches Anders play with the pendant on its long chain, swinging it back and forth. Not putting it on, and actually keeping it carefully distant from his body as the cord tangles through his fingers.

She frowns. "Are you honestly afraid of a little sacrilege _now_?"

Anders closes his fist around the amulet and turns back to her. "No," he whispers, unconvincingly.

She raises an eyebrow. "I _can_ take it back, you know."

"It's not that. It's just I..."

"Still believe," Hawke finishes. "Or still... _want_ to believe."

She lets out a long, slow breath and scrambles up onto the tabletop to lean close to Anders. And she disentangles the amulet from his hand. And he lets her.

She runs her fingers over the smooth surface of the symbol - just lines to her, meaninglesss. Everything she's learned about the Chantry comes from her father, the only thing she knows about religion is that it's all lies. But Anders... he grew up surrounded by the Church, the Chant... it's part of him even when he wishes that it wasn't.

"Every time I think I've figured out every reason I could possibly have to love you, you give me something like this."

He reaches for the amulet, and she gives it back to him.

And now he really does study it, carefully, as though he's trying to discern its secrets.

"So it's not a subtle message that you'd like me dead?" he teases.

"The Chantry has literally given you _every reason_ to hate them. But you still want to believe there's something good in faith."

"There _is_," he insists. "Though darkness comes upon me, I shall embrace the light. I shall weather the storm. I shall endure."

"That's the Chant?" Obviously. She's pretty sure she's heard it before. From her mother, maybe.

"Canticle of Trials, yeah," Anders confirms. "Got me through some... rough spots."

He slips the amulet over his head, though she notices that he does make the effort to hide it beneath his several layers of clothing. He really _isn't_ suicidal.

"Really?"

He shrugs. "Shiny and subversive, right? I think Andrastre'd probably approve."


	26. Solutions

"Hawke, there are... disturbing rumors coming out of the Gallows. I want you with me to check this out."

She frowns, turning away from the stockpile of lyrium vials and medications she's been restocking. Some of them she still gets from "Lady Elegant," who pretty well shares her opinion on the utter uselessness of nobility and title and continues spending her time on more... practical hobbies in Lowtown. The rest she liberates from other places, people who won't miss them or could easily get more. It's surprisingly easy to lift supplies from the Chantry, actually. And the Gallows. Her friendship with Sol helps her out there. He's always wanting to pawn "exciting new creations" on her, but it's easy enough to talk him down and trade for the mixes that are actual _helpful_. Anders can make them too, in a pinch, though he tells her he's not as good at it as a trained herbalist, and there's no reason for him to spend his time on it when she can easily get the good stuff.

"I take it you mean more disturbing than usual?"

"There's reason to believe that Karl was... more than just an isolated incident. They didn't just use him as a trap for me."

His breathing has taken on that shakiness that comes when he's trying not to let on how much old memories still _hurt_.

It makes her want to fight somebody, especially knowing that these things that hurt him so badly all come from the Circle. That they would manipulate his worst fears in such a way is bad enough - that they would _destroy_ another man to do so... no, Karl _wasn't_ an "isolated incident," he was a _person_, once. A good man, like Anders, like her father. Another body left to rot without a _word_. She _hates_ that they live in a world where the templars not only get away with murder, but are _celebrated_ for it.

But she knows that what Anders needs right now isn't her violent anger, he's got plenty of his own. He needs _her_. So she just takes his hand and lets him hold her, and waits for him to be ready to tell her... whatever it is that's got him so concerned.

"You know it's against Chantry law to make Harrowed mages Tranquil?"

She nods. She knows exactly what that law had meant for him too. Biding his time before running, biting his tongue, not fighting back, until after he'd passed his apprenticeship.

"Ferelden followed the law. Tranquility was never meant to be a punishment. It's... at least on paper, it always has to be the mage's choice. Apprentices can choose it, instead of undergoing the Harrowing. If you fail that test, they kill you, they _don't_ make you Tranquil. Because you've already forfeited that choice. If they deem you... too dangerous to test, for whatever reason, they can make the offer. A way to save your life, even when they can't trust your ability to keep control of that connection to the Fade. But you _can_ choose execution instead."

"Some choice," Hawke mutters.

He knows exactly how she feels.

It's the choice that had been forced on Jowan, stupid enough to get caught dabbling with blood magic before his Harrowing, that dividing line that might have bought him some safety. Well, no... it would have brought him to the same ending. Execution. Clear and simple. The same orders that had come down for Melly, because she _had_ crossed that line, just hours before it turned out to _matter_. At least Greagoir still respected Jowan's choice, when he said he'd rather die than be made Tranquil.

Just like Anders _knew_ he'd rather feel every lash they'd ever tortured him with than _never feel_ _anything_ again. It's what sustained him in the dark. The _worst_ terror, the agonizing pain... it _had_ _to be_ better than _nothing_.

"Kirkwall is apparently making its own law. They don't want the trouble of... well, of people like me. Meredith doesn't want her rebels becoming martyrs. They're using Tranquility to silence dissent, to keep control. And the Chantry isn't doing a _single_ _thing_ to stop it. They're not enforcing their own law, because..."

"Because why _would_ they?" Hawke says, unable to keep the harsh bitterness from her voice. "This works in their _favor_, in every way."

"The Tranquil Solution, they're calling it. The work of a particularly sadistic templar named Alrik... and the fact that he's using the ritual in this manner means he _knows_ exactly what he's doing. All those lies they spout about it being a _mercy_... he knows the _truth_, Hawke. He's doing this because he _knows_ any mage will fear it more than any other pain they can inflict. The kids trapped in the Circle will do _literally_ _anything_ to avoid Tranquility. The Gallows has just become the _worst_ _kind_ of prison. And nobody can pretend otherwise. Not anymore."

A thousand thoughts swirl in Hawke's mind, none of them solid or coherent beneath the same familiar helpless rage. But at least here, on the outside, she _can_ fight. But what are they supposed to do, against _this_?

"But it's... just rumors, you said. You don't know for sure?"

"No," Anders admits. "That's why I want you with me."

"For... what exactly? What are you _planning_?"

"I need _evidence_, Hawke. Something solid, that they can't hide behind. We force the Chantry to openly acknowledge what they're doing, announce it to the world. They're good at that. Standing on the street corners screaming. Well I've got one for them: _'All_ _things are known to_ _our Maker,_ _and He_ _shall_ _judge their lies.'_"

Hawke stares at him incredulously, and he flashes her a grin. "Yeah, the templars never liked it much either when I spit their quotes back in their faces. Play the game by their rules, and they _still_ lose? Best thing ever."

She follows Anders into the familiar Darktown passageways in the quiet night. He's tense, the way he always is in these dark, claustrophobic spaces, and she is amazed every time he manages to force himself to do these things because he knows no one else will.

They're here for another secret handoff, not smuggling mages this time, but that kind of evidence he needs, something _proven_ that can't be denied. Words as weapons.

Delivered to them by a _templar_. Hawke freezes up when she sees him, the _Knight_ _Captain_, Meredith's _second-in-command_.

But Anders relaxes. Not _completely_, not ever, but noticeably. "Cullen. I should've expected you."

"I know why you're here."

"Yeah? You doing anything to stop it?"

The other man sighs. He sounds _older_ and more burdened than Anders has _ever_ remembered hearing him. But then, they've both grown up, haven't they?

"Anders, I won't lie to you. Things are... _dark_, here. The Knight Commander is _merciless_ in her enforcement of Chantry law, more ruthless than your worst memories of Kinloch Hold. But she _will not_ cross that law. She rejected Alrik's so-called solution as soon as he proposed it, and he is being _carefully_ watched. One false step, and he's out of the Order. Some of us still know the right thing to do."

Anders smiles. _Because_ _it's the_ _right_ _thing to_ _do. _"Still wishing you could run away, Cullen?"

"No. We're both beyond running now, aren't we?"

There's always a time to stop running. To stand against the darkness in whatever way you can. _Because it's the right thing to do_.

"I suppose we are."


	27. Skeletons in Shiny Closets

Tensions mount in the city. It's obvious to everyone, in the way the citizens hurry to lock themselves behind thick doors, in the increasing patrols of templars seeking blood mages as though they multiply in the streets.

It's clear in the stories Varric tells, in the rumors Isabela gathers as she satisfies her desires among the sailors and dockworkers.

Criminals have begun to run to the Qunari for sanctuary, claiming diplomatic immunity, and in Hightown, the nobles fret about all these bad things spilling into their perfect lives, beyond their ability to ignore them.

And above it all, the Chantry, the place where these same terrified citizens go for comfort, to have their fears relieved, is home to women in Sister's robes who light the fires of hatred against those who endanger their lies and games.

"I will keep their fire bright in every sermon, _every _prayer!" announces Petrice, the same woman who'd _kidnapped_ a Qunari mage, used them _all_ as tools.

"You're _trying_ to get the Qunari to attack us," Hawke murmers, listening to the woman practically inciting violence in the streets. _"Why?"_

"To keep the citizenry afraid,"Anders realizes. "In need of the Chantry's protection. Looking away from what's really going on. They'll be _grateful_ for Meredith's extreme measures. Protecting the common people from..."

"Heretics and apostates," Hawke breathes. "Manipulative _bastards_. Don't they care at all how many will _die_ for their agenda?"

"It is our solemn duty," Sister Petrice intones. "We _must_ cleanse these streets of those who spout lies against our Maker. There are those who have not stood vigilant, watchful, and _they_ have been swept away, by abominations and sinners. Not here!"

Hawke has heard from Aveline that a patrol of Qunari diplomats had been slain, that the Viscount's office suspects Chantry involvement but dares not make a public accusation.

But the look in Petrice's eyes confirms it. _She_ did it, or was involved, or at the very least _knew_ and profited from those deaths.

She scowls and seethes. She knows the Chantry's right about her being dangerous. She _has_ killed people. But so have they.

She has no great love for the Qunari, in fact understands very little about them. But she understands _enough_.

"Last I checked, _murder_ was a sin," she spits. "_And_ illegal. Though if you'd like, I can ask my friend, the Captain of the Guard, about it. Just to make sure."

"Are you threatening me?" the Sister sneers.

"No. I'm just telling the _truth_. You came to Lowtown looking for uncaring criminals like me to do your dirty work. You don't get to pretend _now_ that what you did was good and right and acceptable."

To Hawke's everlasting surprise, the _Grand_ _Cleric_ agrees with her, and orders a few of the lackeys standing around to fetch a guard.

Of course, Hawke is _sure _that only Sebastian's quiet intervention keeps her and Anders from being arrested right along with the good Sister. And she _still_ doesn't know why this Chantry boy goes out on a limb to protect them. So many people do, when they could so easily condemn them with a simple word. But Sebastian and even Fenris have expressed genuine admiration and gratitude for the healing work Anders does without hope of reward for the poorest of the poor, while the Chantry always _asks_ for something in return. Money and devotion and sacrifice.

As far as Hawke is concerned, the Ferelden refugees and destitute Marchers who can scrape together no other living except Darktown have sacrified enough.

Even the Qunari have seen it; there is no true justice in Kirkwall. Although Hightown sparkles, there are _plenty_ of bloody skeletons hidden in those shiny white closets.

These are the thoughts that spin through her head as she heads for _her_ family's shiny white closet, the estate that was once home to the Amells whose blood runs through her veins, who sacrificed their _daughter_ to the Circle.

At least things turned out fairly well for Rhyanon - Hero of Ferelden now. But before they turned out well, like Anders, she had suffered things no child should have to, lessons of fear and pain reinforced by a life of endless days in a windowless prison with no hope of a future.

_As always_, she's thankful Anders broke free before he was broken, that this cousin she may not ever get to know got away, that Bethany never had to live in a place like that.

But there are so many others still caught in that web, brutality hidden behind sticky-sweet lies of protection and safety.

There are too many who still believe them.

Mages who accept that they are cursed and believe they deserve to be punished. _Children_ who refuse to fight because they see no hope of winning, who refuse to run because there is no place in the world to run _to_.

It's slowly changing now, with Anders' underground building. But it is not enough. Some days it feels they can _never_ do enough, with all of heaven and earth against them.

They _all_ have those moments, Anders tells her, the times when they begin to believe that this indoctrination _must_ be true, to stand for so long, with so much force. In the Gallows, in Ferelden's Tower, all over Thedas, children are beaten into submission by the heavy weight of guilt and fear, even the ones who have never been touched, physically. They all have their moments. He did too, and so did Rhyanon. The Hero of Ferelden was once a damaged Circle mage. Damaged but not destroyed, and she got lucky.

Anders has begun to tell Hawke scattered bits of her _real_ story, and though Hawke privately rages against the family that _let_ these things happen to _their _child_, _they _both_ wonder how she'd have reacted to the high society she was born into.

"She'd have hated it," Anders declares. "All the lies and games."

But part of him wonders... even in the Circle, she'd been a natural at diplomacy, at knowing when to stand up for the right thing and knowing when to be patient and wait for the right moment, and giving people what they wanted to get something even more important in return.

He'd learned a little, by watching her, though he's certain the little girl never realized it.

And now... Commander of the Wardens, leader-by-default in Amaranthine. She runs a court, _she_ makes the decisions. And she does a damn good job of it. He wonders if she'd come home, if he asked her to. Kirkwall could use someone like her.

He tries, and so does Hawke, but they don't know what they're doing. "But neither did she," Anders says, with more than a little amusement. "She was always the first one to tell me that."


	28. While You Weren't Watching

**Notes: **Still tweaking the given events of the game to suit my needs. Leandra murdered by a serial killer? I'm good with that. Serial killer turns out to be an insane apostate who's not above playing in blood? I can even get behind that. Zombies? No. No zombies or reconstructed bodies here.

* * *

><p>Hawke's guard is up immediately the minute she crosses the threshold of her mother's mansion, stumbling slightly after a bit too much of the Hanged Man's rat-flavored whiskey, an attempt to drink enough to stop caring about how badly Isabela cheated her at cards. Bodahn announces that Gamlen is looking for her, and her mood darkens further still. <em>That's<em> never good.

"Where's your mother?" Gamlen asks nervously. Straight to the point, without even pretending to be weasly for the sake of tradition?

"How should I know? I just got here."

Anybody else might say something about her state at this hour of the day - hell, her _mother_ would say something. But Gamlen doesn't. He only gives her a thoughtful frown that looks _entirely_ out of place on him.

"She was late for our weekly meeting. That's... not like her. I'm worried. I know the route she takes to get from here to my house and -"

"Maybe she just remembered that she hates you," Hawke interrupts.

In truth, she's surprised her mother had been regularly meeting with Gamlen. She hadn't known anything about that. She supposes she shouldn't be surprised. Even if her mother _did_ hate her family, she didn't come all the way to Kirkwall just to ignore them. And she'd never turn down the opportunity to be _polite_, even to someone she loathes.

"Perhaps she's gone to see her suitor," Bodahn intejects helpfully, pointing to a bouquet of recently delivered flowers on the desk.

And it clicks. Bits and pieces of rumors that she's heard, from Aveline, from Varric, even from whispers in Anders' clinic. That women receive a gift of flowers - always white lilies - from a mysterious suitor, and then they are never seen again.

Hanging out in Darktown, she's not exactly a stranger to the idea of killing someone for money, or even planning elaborate games like this one to get the job done. Athenril was usually against cold-blooded _murder_, as it brought far too much attention, but it would be _stupid_ not to realize that her mother has made a target of herself.

Sebastian the Chantry prince is proof enough that a noble's title can make you even _more_ of a target.

A cold feeling settles in her gut, but she masks her fear and tells Gamlen she's certain he's just worrying too much.

But Gamlen's been part of the criminal underworld of Kirkwall for years longer than she has, even if only on its fringes, and usually a _victim._ He knows they're both right to be worried, and he insists on joining her to hunt through the city's streets, to find his prodigal sister before it's too late.

Hawke's opinion of her uncle rises another small step.

Between the reputation she's gathered in the darker corners of Kirkwall - good _and_ bad, and his willingness to part with surprising amounts of coin in exchange for honest information, they manage to track down a lead surprisingly quickly.

And Aveline and Anders both attach themselves to the hunt - Aveline because it's her _job_, but also because, for some surprising reason, she's another who gets along with Hawke's mother far better than her _actual_ daughter. Probably because she's able to actually do something with her life because her mere _existence_ isn't illegal.

And Anders because it's _her_, and it's her family, and even now he's not beyond reminding her by his presence and his help that _family_ _matters_. And he's sort of adopted her as his own now. They've never actually _talked _about it, but it's blatantly obvious nonetheless.

She's grateful for his presence, more with every step into the choking foulness of the foundry district, as her choking fear mixes with the stale air to make her feel sick.

And then comes the moment when they find her mother's ring, a simple band given to her on her wedding day, discarded like a piece of garbage. Hawke _knows_ her mother would never willingly remove that. She'd always said she'd wear it til the day she dies. And that, more than anything, confirms her worst fears, and she realizes now on the brink of losing her how much she _loves_ her mother, needs her, regrets all the things she'd never said.

And she knows before she even needs to see it that she's lost this chance because everything good is taken away, because that's just how her _life_ works. Cursed by the Maker. It doesn't matter if the Chantry says it or if she _believes_ them. She feels it anyway.

They look for a killer, they find a desperate man surrounded by bodies, other women fallen prey to his twisted desires, victimized by a hunger for blood. He stares at them with wild-eyed insanity, his fingers painting in the dark black-red pools of life drained from those cold corpses.

Hawke lashes out with simple, dispassionate ease, a knife at his throat, a fire in her hand. He is dead within heartbeats, she barely _touches_ him.

The stirrings of dark magic that _pull_ _at_ _her_ snap suddenly out of being. Whatever demon had held him is gone now, without his body to give it life.

She glances down at his body, just one more dead and no one will _notice,_ and she realizes that someone else might have cared, might have asked him questions. What was he trying to accomplish? A thousand _whys_, a bargain. She didn't think at all. She didn't _want_ his reasons or his lies.

Her heart beats in loud echoes that ring through the stone walls, the dying city all around her, closing in. The steady music pulls her forward, hope that _will_ _not die_, although she knows it _should_.

Her steps quicken, and suddenly stop, as her heart sinks, her stomach twists and tangles.

Because here is her mother, found, too late. Leandra is choking in a pool of her own blood, and Hawke collapses to her knees, paralyzed by the memory of her father, dying alone in a field as she huddled helplessly nearby.

She _can't_ let that happen again, she _won't_. Tears sting her eyes as she lets her hands run all over her mother's skin, already too pale, and cold. The heartbeat she feels is fluttering, a frighteningly _quiet_ contrast to her own steady pulse.

"I knew you'd come," her mother whispers.

"Don't I always?" Hawke whimpers through breaking sobs as she tries desperately to channel her mana into something that can _help_.

All the times she said "I hate you" because she couldn't find the right word: _love_. All the angry accusations when she meant "thank you." All the times she ran away, because she was afraid to stay, to disappoint the woman who had already lost too much, who sacrificed _everything_ for her demon-blooded little girl. Who saw something in her worth saving, that no one else in the world ever saw.

"Mother, I..."

"Shh," Leandra whispers, reaching out to brush a stray lock of hair out of her daughter's eyes, just like she'd done when she was a toddler. Before she was a mage.

"I am _so_ proud of you, Calli."

"Shut _up_, mother! I'm not going to let you _die_."

Her mother continues to fade, bleeding and weak, and she _tries_ but nothing she does is good enough, it never has been. She cries until she's empty. Of tears, of mana, of hope.

She feels Anders taking her carefully in his arms, and she can't even summon the energy to push him away.

"There was nothing we could have done," he whispers. "Some things, even magic can't fix."

Hawke struggles to think of a single thing that magic ever _could_ fix.


	29. Perfect World

**Notes:** The chapter title is also the title of a song by Shonen Knife, home of one of my favorite lyrics of all time "When I reach out to you it feels like coming home."

* * *

><p>He carries her home.<p>

Well, not literally, but it might as well be, because she sure as hell _knows_ she would never have found her way out of that pit by herself. Anders holds her and guides her through the city streets and cleans the blood from her skin and strips her of her armor, dresses her in sleeping clothes.

She wakes up again some indeterminate number of hours later.

And he's still there. Half-asleep in a chair near the fireplace, but he jolts to full alertness as soon as she stirs.

And he crawls into the bed, to hold her. She shifts away from his touch. She doesn't _want_ to be comforted.

He recoils as though physically burned by her rejection, sitting up, pressing himself against the headboard as far away from her as the bed will allow. It's a needlessly huge bed, so that space between them now might as well be a gaping chasm.

She recognizes the hiccups in his breathing, he does it when he's trying to seem relaxed but he _isn't_, and she immediately feels even _worse_. Great. Now she's hurting _Anders_ too. He doesn't deserve this. He should go help the people he actually _can_ make better.

"Go 'way," she murmurs, burrowing her head in the pillow and convincing absolutely no one that she's actually asleep. At the foot of the bed, the dog gives a single sharp bark in response.

"No," Anders says.

"You're a stubborn ass," Hawke retorts.

"I know," he tells her.

But he doesn't touch her.

And she knows it's her fault, but it reminds her of just how _alone_ she is, how many people she can't get her act together enough to love, and tears fall again even though she thought she'd run out of those. She hurls the pillow as hard as she can, sending it bouncing off the wall to slide across the floor. The dog whines and attacks it, upset that it's apparently made his human angry.

"Anders, she's _dead_, because _I_ didn't care about her. I didn't pay attention and I _should've!_"

"Hawke... your mother was a grown woman. She was perfectly care of making her own choices, and believe me when I tell you she'd never want you blaming yourself."

"If you think that you clearly didn't know my mother as well as you thought you did," she hiccups, feeling the stabbing pain that's riding the recognition that she's using the past tense.

"Nevertheless, I do know a bit about taking the blame for things that aren't my fault. I know how easy it is to do, and I know how much it hurts."

"Didn't you ever, even _once_, think the templars might be _right_? My mother's _dead_ because of a blood mage, preying on _innocent_ _people_ in the streets of Kirkwall. Hell, Anders, _I've_ killed people with magic."

"And you've healed people with that same magic, love," he whispers, pulling her close, and she shivers beneath his touch. _Why_ does he still want her? "The man that killed your mother was just that, a _man_. Troubled and dangerous, true, but magic did not make him that way."

"Really?"

"Do you know how I _know_ you don't deserve to be locked up? Because you've got enough of a conscience to think you do."

"By that logic, you _do_ deserve it," Hawke retorts, and a very tiny smile creeps across her face.

"Maybe," he replies teasingly, leaning in for a kiss. She kisses him back, hungrily, grabbing for him, refusing to let go.

"Anders, don't leave. Don't leave me alone."

"Never," he promises.


	30. Hold The Line With Me

"I thought I might find you here."

Hawke turns to find her little brother - _not_ in templar armor, for once - lingering a few footsteps away, as though afraid to come any closer to the freshly carved marker that adds Leandra's name to the list of Amell family dead whose ashes will forever remain locked in this crypt.

"I figured I ought not try sitting through a Chantry service. Place might explode."

Carver smiles sadly. "You'd have hated it," he agrees. "_I_ hated it. I was _this close_ to getting myself in some serious trouble for assaulting a superior when the Knight Commander turned our mother's death into an excuse for another sermon on the dangers of blood magic."

"That _bitch_," Hawke spits.

Carver doesn't disagree.

They stare at the memorial stone for a long while, awkward. Afraid to touch one another, afraid to _speak_. They'd never gotten along, exactly, but _this_ is entirely new.

"Guess it's up to you to carry on the family legacy in this city after all," Carver finally says.

"That'd be the legacy _both_ our parents were running from?"

Carver shrugs. "Well it's only us left, isn't it? If we screw it up, there'll be no one to care."

Hawke snorts. "You'd better go, baby brother. Before you get caught not-arresting me."

"Nice try. We're both smarter than that. Won't get caught, unless _you've_ been showing off."

She shakes her head. She keeps her secrets as well as she always has. If anyone connects her with magic at all, it's only because of all the hours she spends in the clinic with Anders. "Doesn't matter much though, does it? It's only a matter of time, if your commander carries on the way she has been. Raids in the middle of the night, interrogation -"

"And they create as much discord inside the Order as outside," Carver hastily assures her. "I thought you _trusted_ me more than that, Callin. We know how to pull our punches. Nobody..." he hesitates, then takes a careful breath. "Nobody _wants_ blood mages running free. But we still need _proof_ before we declare guilt. And when lines are crossed... sometimes, it means doing the right thing anyway. A little bit of healing, if it's needed. An unlocked door, a shift in the patrol schedule. Little tricks the Knight Captain picked up in Ferelden, by the way."

A shiver runs down Hawke's spine, because she can _so easily_ call to mind Anders' scars and nightmares, even if she can't _imagine_ how he endured the tortures that caused them.

But she remembers too the stories he'd told her of a fragile alliance slowly built with a templar who broke all the rules to be his friend, when he had _nothing_ to gain by doing so. A friendship that keeps him safe even today, a half a world away.

"Is this really how it's supposed to be?" she asks her brother.

Carver smiles. "What, keeping secrets? Pretending to be enemies while we look out for each other? Yeah. It feels about right to me. Be careful, sister."

Hawke watches as he begins the long, slow walk back to the Gallows, newly aware of just what he's given up, _willingly_ locking himself in that prison that so terrifies her.

"You too, idiot," she whispers.


	31. Champion

The city is on fire.

There are screams and the clangs of weaponry and the sounds of running and hysterical crying, neighbors cut down as they beg uselessly for their lives through choking tears.

Hawke wakes up in a large bed, an empty room that _still_ feels unfamiliar, and struggles to break free of the nightmare. She doesn't often dream of Lothering and the Blight, but the memories, when they come, are haunting. And they've been coming, in the weeks since her mother's death. She'd told Anders she didn't care much about Ferelden, and he doesn't either, but in Lothering she'd been _happy_. She'd had a father and a mother, and a baby sister.

She closes her eyes and attempts to fall asleep again and it is only then that she realizes that the screaming and sounds of her dream have not faded.

It's not a dream after all. It's real.

The city is on fire.

She scrambles out of bed and pulls on clothing, armor and weapon that are always near-to-hand these days.

And she walks out into the Hightown streets to meet a city under siege.

The Qunari, it seems, are no longer content with waiting idle in their barricaded stronghold.

"Oh, good, Hawke!" she hears Aveline call. "You can help."

She sighs. She's never been exactly _friends_ with the Captain of the Guard, but they help each other out. She'd feel _bad_ walking away from this. And Aveline would never let her hear the end of it. She meets the other woman and grows more worried as she hears a full accounting of the situation.

The city will fall within _hours_ unless they can come up with some kind of resistance far stronger than the one they've got. The worst of the fighting is near the docks, spilling into Darktown...

"Anders -"

"Is fine," Aveline cuts her off.

"Right here, love." Hawke whirls around to see him, geared up for battle, a cocky grin on his face. "Varric grabbed me as soon as... things started getting interesting. I was worried about _you_. As soon as I heard they were heading up here..."

"I'm fine," she breathes, running into his waiting arms. "I'm fine," she repeats, battering uselessly at his chest with weak punches, until he catches her hand and holds it in his. "Don't scare me like that again," she demands.

"Never," he promises.

With Anders at her side Hawke feels as though she could take on an army. Which is good, because as Aveline leads their little group through the city, that's exactly what they have to contend with.

They fight the Qunari in little clumps and roving bands, and by the third or fourth its obvious that they're starting to be taken seriously. The Qunari no longer taunt them. They simply _fight_. And they start to send their serious attacks against the group of stubborn survivors who have taken out a dozen of their warriors already.

Magical attacks come firing at them, from the collared Saarebas.

And where magical attacks are, templars are.

When the Saarebas falls, it's not to any of _their_ attacks, but to the sword of Knight Commander Meredith herself, making it clear that she's earned every bit of her terrifying reputation.

She eyes Hawke with a predator's glint in her eye, until Aveline gets between them.

The Knight Commander and the Guard Captain have a staring contest _almost_ as intense as the actual _battle_ they'd just been involved in.

Hawke takes the opportunity to slip away without anyone noticing. She takes barely half a step before the templar's voice rings out over the commotion of the city at war.

"Wait," Meredith orders. And there is no doubt it _is_ an order.

Hawke turns, pretending not to notice Anders flinching at her side.

"The Qunari are gathering hostages, attempting to gain control of the city. We will need to deal with them."

"Why should I?" Hawke demands, ignoring the fact that she'd pretty much been doing exactly that.

But she'd been attacking only when one of the Qunari came after her first. What the Knight Commander is asking is far different.

Meredith stares down at her with ice-cold eyes and a sneer that still makes her want to back away, or run. She holds her ground.

"Do you take me for a fool?" the woman asks, dangerously calm. "I _saw_ _you_ using magic. I am giving you one chance and one chance only to prove yourself, apostate. Do not test me!"

"Uh oh," Anders mutters, under his breath.

"So I get killed by the Qunari or stabbed by _you_." Hawke spits. "Brilliant."

Her eyes fall on the broken body of the Saarebas still lying in a pool of blood at the Knight Commander's feet. The Qunari mage _had_ been trying to kill her, but she still shivers knowing that Meredith sees no difference between the attacking Qunari and _her_. And Anders. She'd run her sword through both of them without hesitation or regret.

The Qunari talisman burns hot against her skin. Most days she doesn't even remember that it's there, but... today is not most days.

The last time her home town was on fire she was smart enough to _run_ _away from it_. To wind up here.

And it's sort of crept up on her, but she realizes that Kirkwall _is_ her home. Not Hightown, the Amell estate her mother had wanted so badly to reclaim, but the parts of the city the Qunari are already destroying. Lowtown. Darktown. The people that Anders will not abandon, the other Ferelden refugees and destitute children who do not have the option of running.

And the mages in the Gallows who aren't even given even a suicidal chance at "proving themselves."

And her brother, stupid Carver, who got himself tangled in with the templars because he thought he could protect her, make the Circle prison better from the inside out. If she runs now, she's abandoning the little boy she remembers standing up for her in Lothering when she never needed it. She'd be signing her own death warrant and his too, because if Meredith's regime is willing to execute random civilians for hiding apostates there's absolutely no chance Carver would get away with it while _being_ a templar.

And Anders asked her to fight. She thought he meant the _templars_, but she can't run from this fight either.

_This is her city_, and she has to do what she can to protect it.

Even if it means fighting side-by-side with the templars.

"Fine," she tells the Knight Commander. "What am I supposed to do?"

"They're taking people to the Keep."

_People_ of course meaning the Hightown nobles, the hostages worth some kind of ransom.

The poor commoners aren't _worth_ keeping alive. _Their_ homes are burning and they are cut down in any attempt to flee.

Just like in Lothering, except that the Qunari are intelligent enough to make the _choice_ to kill them. It's _worse_ than when it was just the mindless brutality of the darkspawn, and that was bad enough.

If she wants to save them, if she wants to stop them, she has to do it now.

She has no illusion that the Qunari leader will listen to her pleas. From everything she's heard and seen, their culture doesn't even have a concept of mercy.

But then, she thinks, glancing at the bloody sword on Meredith's templar armor, it's not like humans are doing all that much better on that front.

"You speak on behalf of your people," the Arishok growls, as she storms the castle to confront him. _"Why?"_

"I'm the only one stupid enough to try," Hawke replies honestly.

The Qunari makes a sound that _might_ be laughter, a brief chortle.

He lays down terms, a fight, a duel. To the death. She doesn't have to fight off a whole army, she just has to fight _him_.

Well she's already figured this was a suicide mission.

And she's got tricks up her sleeve that she can _guarantee_ he won't be expecting.

She flashes him a charming grin and the assembled masses of Kirkwall look at her like she's _crazy_. Maybe she is.

"Okay," she tells him, with no fear. "Let's put on a show."

She'll teach him a thing or two about "dangerous things."

She weaves the tapestry of destruction, desperate channeling of the force she carries in her veins, openly pulling at the walls of the Fade to keep herself alive. She throws everything she has against this enemy who _voluntarily_ steps in front of fire and ice and lightning. She stays one step ahead, small and quick where he is paralyzed by his large and lumbering bulk even without the assistance of her carefully manipulated power.

He accepts defeat, accepts _death_, with an impressive sort of grace that she's certain she'd never be capable of.

Her world once again expands beyond her own heartbeat and breath reverberating in her ears, as she collapses from the indescribable exhaustion and searing _emptiness_ of overreaching, being drained of _all_ the mana that she should be able to feel playing in her blood but she _can't_. There's just _nothing_.

And she slowly starts to realize as the whispers echo around her that she's just proven everybody _right_. Mages _are_ dangerous, uncontrollable, they _should_ be feared.

She just saved the city, and they're probably going to kill her for it.

She waits, ready for the cold metallic shock of manacles around her wrists, or simply for the sword slicing through her.

But what she gets instead is Anders gentle, healing touch. His strong arms hold her, and around them, wild applause rings.

And though she can practically _feel_ Meredith's teeth grinding, the Knight Commander calls her "Champion."

What the hell does _that _mean?


	32. The Same As It's Always Been

It still feels _wrong_.

Everyone watches her in the markets. Bodahn is beside himself with glee delivering the constant stream of correspondence from the nobles and power-players in Kirkwall, who consider her to be one of them now.

And Knight Commander Meredith watches her too, pretending all the while that they have some sort of working relationship, when it's obvious that what they really have is blackmail, a continuation of the ultimatum laid down during the Qunari invasion: "prove yourself, apostate."

There's no chance of slipping into Darktown and losing herself among the criminals and refugees, not anymore.

She has no right to complain about the increased scrutiny, and she _knows_ that. She should be locked up in the Gallows, or dead.

Her life - her freedom, her newly acquired status, her invitations to meetings with the dead Viscount's struggling staff after hasty and not-entirely-helpful lessons in politics and diplomacy from Aveline and Varric and Sebastian - she's changing all the rules just by _existing_.

But it can't change _years_ of habit. Every new realization that she's been exposed sends a shiver of fear through her, an instinctive need to _run_, to start again somewhere new where nobody knows her.

The worst part though, is the new awkwardness between her and Anders. He knows perfectly well that this fame she has is an accident, not something she ever wanted. He knows that if she had her way she'd go right back to snatching naps on the unoccupied cots of his clinic instead of pretending she knows what she's doing in the cavernous empty rooms of Hightown. He tries to pretend that this changes nothing between them. But it _has_. She sees it in his eyes, that old haunted darkness. He thinks she's getting friendly with Meredith, and he reads it as a betrayal. It doesn't matter how often she protests that she feels exactly the same way about the templars as she always has. He hesitates now when he talks to her, hides things. He avoids the estate that he'd tried so hard to get her into in the first place. She sits alone in the library flipping uselessly through his favorite books, hoping each time that she'll turn around to find him there, watching her with that same familiar smile. But it hasn't happened yet.

She has to go _looking_ for him now, and it's too easy to see that he's working himself to exhaustion, struggling to stem the rising tide of disease in the city while avoiding her. And his patients, the same people she'd been living among and working with for _years_, don't trust her anymore.

Varric and Isabela try to cheer her up, keeping her plied with alcohol in Hanged Man, another place she's not supposed to go these days, but she'll be damned if the insane demands of her useless title take this away from her too.

"Cheer up, sweetie," the pirate insists. "He'll come around."

Hawke just knocks back another round of ale and hopes the other woman is right.

She spends hours getting herself good and drunk, and she debates whether it's worth even _moving_ from the table where she could very easily just pass out.

"Go talk to him," Isabela insists, practically pushing her out the door, and shadowing her through the nighttime streets, where the people have grown even _more_ desperate and dangerous in the aftermath of the Qunari invasion and the Knight Commander's subsequent establishment of martial law in all but name, over Aveline's objections.

Ordinarily, Hawke would protest against having a _babysitter_, but anonymity is something else she's lost. She's a target now, from every direction. And her current state, having someone to watch her back is _probably_ a good thing.

She manages to stumble into the clinic, and Anders catches her before she collapses. The entire world is spinning, but he holds her steady, and she doesn't even care to check if Isabela is still spying on them, taking notes. His arms are warm and safe around her and she can't remember why she was afraid to come here.

"Anders, I _need_ you," she mumbles. "I can't do this by myself."

"I know," he whispers, and his fingers trail slow circles against her skin. His mana washes over her like a comforting wave, swirling and mixing with hers. She never realized just how much she _missed_ it. "I'm sorry, Hawke. I'm so sorry. I never... I thought I'd only drag you down. I figured you wouldn't want me anymore."

Hawke laughs as tears spill down her face to splash against his skin. "I was _right_," she tells him. "You are an absolute _idiot_."

He stares at her with a bemused sort of grin as her heart surges with happiness, a new kind of confidence she can only get with him. "It's the same as it's always been, Anders. You and me against the world."


	33. Island In The Storm

"You really want to do this?" Anders asks, trailing his hand in nervous skips along the banister at the top of her stairs, sending darting glances over his shoulder and out the small window, as though he's going to be attacked at any moment. He was never _afraid_ of this place before. "You'd tie yourself to an apostate - to _me_ - in front of Knight Commander and everyone else in the city?"

Hawke rolls her eyes. "Didn't we cover this already? Besides, _I am_ an apostate. I'd think that would be their larger concern."

"It's different, though. I... neither one of us are good at politics, but it seems to me that they want you as their... pet. If you do something like carve out a not-so-subtle stronghold for the mage resistance in the middle of Hightown... there's nothing to stop them..." His grip on her, which had started out as a gentle hug, is now tight and almost confining. Even more than words, his _touch_ tells her how afraid he is to let her go. "Hawke, I _can't_ stand the thought of anything happening to you," he insists.

She shifts out of his hold, gently, so that she can look him in the eyes. Though she's still careful to hover just inside his reach, close enough to touch. She has to lean back, look up, to really see him, so much taller than she is, but he looks small and scared and way too _serious_. He's afraid now, all the time, this whole _city_ is crushing him, as dark and desperate a prison as the one he'd fled, and the one that casts its shadowy tendrils into their streets from its ominous island. Though separated by a stretch of choppy water, the Gallows _is_ Kirkwall. You can see it, and feel it, from every part of the city. The Knight Commander and her templars step out from behind the bars and consume the streets. They're in the markets now, and the Keep that was once home to the Viscount, where Meredith screams paranoid justifications for her crackdowns to wild applause. At her side, the First Enchanter cowers and stammers and eventually runs back to his prison cell, grateful for the _privilege_ of being allowed to accompany her to Hightown for a few moments. And the Knight Commander accuses _him_ of inciting rebellion.

"Nothing's going to happen to me," Hawke murmurs. A promise she can't keep, but she'll sure as hell die trying. "And nothing's going to happen to you either. Here." She fumbles around in her pocket until her fingers light against the cold shock of metal, and she shifts the tiny object awkwardly into his waiting hand.

Anders frowns as he studies the thing, another of her unusual gifts? "A key?"

"It unlocks those cellars that empty out in Darktown. Next to the clinic. And more importantly, it _locks_ them. If you ever need a quick escape, a bolthole..." she shrugs. "Now you've got one. Just in case I'm not with you."

His eyes light up and he clenches the key in a protective fist, shoving it into one of the many deep pockets of his robes. "I'm still amazed how much you risk to protect me."

Hawke stands up on tiptoe to kiss him, pulling him down, crushing her lips against him. Warm and safe, their _own_ island in the storm. "Don't be," she says softly. "Anyway, you practically live here already. We might as well make it official."


	34. In The Middle Of The Night

Hawke is pulled out of sleep at the sound of Anders' voice. Moaning, plaintive whimpers and ragged breathing. He's grabbed hold of as much of the blankets as he can, curled up into a tight ball beneath them. It might actually be sort of adorable if it wasn't so _scary_.

These aren't nightmares like the ones she knows, that leave her thrashing and kicking, fighting against demons and memories in her sleep, until she ends up kicking Anders by mistake and he holds her, calms her down.

Anders doesn't fight. He just shivers slightly, perfectly still. She hears scattered words and phrases as he mumbles: "no," "please," "promise I won't."

Her heart breaks _again_ because she knows these aren't simple nightmares. They're _real_ _memories_ that he's reliving. Pain and helplessness and terror that she can't take away, or fix.

Here, with her, he sleeps without a shirt on, and as his movement shifts the nest of blankets out of his tight grasp to slip away from his skin, the moonlight streaming in from the window highlights the scars that _cover_ his back. Healed now, but that doesn't matter to him or to her, because on nights like this he can still _feel it_, the compounding agony of over a hundred deep lashes, and she feels what he feels. Or at least she feels guilty that she _can't_, actually, that he's suffering through this by himself while his every spasm and breath tears her apart.

There are other scars that she can't see, the ones inside, the ones that come from _months_ alone in the dark, always looking over his shoulder, bracing for inevitable pain. These scars become real in nightmares, and hesitant steps in darkened alleys, or paralyzing terror at the sound of a gate slamming or a lock clicking shut. They're there in the way that, when a templar is nearby, the way they _always are_ these days, he grabs her hand and pulls her mana in to reinforce his, so they can't drain him.

This is the Circle's response to a _child_ who wants to play, to run under the sunlight, to breathe fresh air.

That's how it started.

How does it end?

She reaches out, slow and careful. She needs to wake him up, to reassure him, but the wrong touch will only make things worse. Sometimes he can break out of these things on his own, but she doesn't know if she can bear to wait for that to happen. She rests a gentle hand on his shoulder, ready to pull away if he needs her too.

As expected, he flinches away from her touch and tears leak from his eyes. "I'm sorry," he whines, curling away from her.

"It's me, Anders," she croons softly. "I'm not going to hurt you. Nobody's going to hurt you anymore. I promise."

He shakes his head, curls up tighter. He doesn't believe her, and she knows why: the templars played with him, lied, promised healing or comfort or safety or a fragile temporary peace, and when he trusted them he was rewarded more often than not with cruel laughter and even more vicious blows.

But his eyes flutter open, and she refuses to let go of him. Her fingers linger softly on his skin, a ghost touch, and she concentrates enough to send a flickering wash of healing magic in a gentle wave over him. Another blanket of protection and warmth, one that gets inside him. One that never existed in the dungeons of Kinloch Hold.

"Hawke?" he whispers, his voice tinged with a desperate hope, and he crawls closer and reaches out for her.

"It's me," she repeats. And he cries in her arms, releasing the pain and the fear as she holds him, until he relaxes, rests calm against her body.

"Sorry for waking you up," he manages to whisper, and Hawke smiles, because even now he's worried about _everybody_ _else_ before himself.

His eyes light up at her smile, and he smiles too, though he still refuses to move, as though afraid she might disappear to leave him alone again. He still thinks she'll run away from him if he lets go, no matter how often she tells him otherwise. She never _says it_, anymore, she just stays close, holding onto him in the night.

"Don't _ever_ be sorry," she insists.


	35. Slipping

Anders insists that he won't fall asleep again, protests against her refusal to let him get out of bed. She smiles, watching him, listening to his calm, even breathing. After perhaps half an hour, he'd fallen back into restful sleep just like she knew he would.

By this time, the sky has begun to lighten, shifting through a gradient of pitch black to a lighter blue-grey. The sun will soon rise fully. She knows Anders would normally be awake, outside to watch it, but he needs to sleep, and he _won't_ unless she makes him. She doesn't feel bad leaving him to rest as she slips out into the city streets, after making sure the dog has curled up at the foot of the bed to keep him protected.

The sky is light with reds and oranges and pinks by the time she's finished the short walk to the Chantry. She feels small and insignificant in the shadow of the great building. Not to mention guilty.

She doesn't _believe_ in any of it, but she still can't win a staring contest against the judgmental _statues_. Made of gold, of course, and there are so many expensive things in here, incense and oils and random trinkets that she knows cost a _fortune_ while people continue to starve. More and more every day, after Meredith has practically laid siege to Darktown. The streets were built to contain slave rebellions, after all. It's a simple matter to cut off supplies and increase enforcers down there. All the magic in the world can't cure slow starvation. It's not the mages, blood or otherwise, that the Knight Commander is killing. The most reliable source of food now comes from the Coterie, and they'll hold families hostage, letting promising youngsters work off what they owe in deadly indenture deals like the one that got her into the city all those years ago.

The alienage is, as always, even worse off. They were barely scraping by already, and now Varric tries to cajole Merrill into eating, thinking she's forgetting to take care of herself because of that magical mirror she's trying to fix. Hawke knows the truth is that the elven woman doesn't want to take food away from the others around her who need it more.

Anders makes the same protests when she tries to feed him, no matter how often she points out that he can't heal anybody if he doesn't _eat_. And he needs more food than he lets on, some side effect of being a Grey Warden. He's never fully explained it, but she can see the way that hunger almost literally rips him apart when he refuses to fill his stomach. He's torturing himself trying to make a miracle happen. Hasn't he been tortured enough already in his life? No matter how he tries, it's impossible to feed the whole of Darktown with half a loaf of old bread.

Diseases tear through the population in deadly waves. It's _easy_ for them to kill off scores of people, when so many are weakened by hunger.

_She_ still has access to all the benefits of Hightown, that same ridiculous amount of money that she'd always _hated_. She's never appreciated it more than now. She spends it all on large amounts of simple, filling fare at the markets that are closed off to the Darktown population, by walls and suspicion and lack of money.

She still can't cook very well, but that's hardly a concern. She brings _real food_ to the clinic, fruits and vegetables and meats and cheeses, distributing it carefully. The last thing Anders needs is a riot at his doorstep. Or the Coterie taking their cut from the gifts she hands out to the desperate.

They know better than to be obvious about it, but she still can't be there to protect everybody at all times. And when it comes down to it, she's still just one person. A young woman alone in an alleyway is still a target, even with the ability to throw fire and lightning and ice. It's been a long time since she was afraid of Kirkwall's streets, but they seem darker and more dangerous now.

But in the bright light of this morning, she's not headed for the shadowed streets of Darktown, but the sparkling white stone halls of the Chantry. Following in the footsteps of plenty of the destitute citizens of Kirkwall, she knows full well, and that darkens her mood despite the rising sun.

The templars' short-lived recruitment problems seem to have ended now. The Chantry orphanage always has been a last resort for families with too many mouths to feed, but now the Knight Commander has made it clear that she'll take practically _anyone_, and what parent _wouldn't_ leap to give their child a chance at food and an education and the honor of being a _templar_ when they come of age?

Never mind that most of them are just kids, ten or twelve years old, and given only the choice between being sold to the Coterie or the Chantry. She's not honestly sure which is better.

Carver at least understood what he his getting into and what he was _giving_ _up_. From what she's heard, these junior recruits are given barely more freedom than the mages.

She's not _about_ to side with the templars, but she'd _known_ some of those kids, watched them grow up running through the streets outside Anders' clinic, played games with at least a few of them. She doesn't like the idea of them being locked in the Gallows, turned into trained killers to feed Meredith's ambition.

Carver promises he'll look out for them, as much as he can. He's apparently become somewhat of a rising star inside the Order. The Knight Commander trusts him as much as she trusts anybody, and has put him in charge of training some of the older recruits, who may actually be able to wield a sword and shield adequately within months rather than years.

He tells her all this when they meet up in the Chantry, every now and then.

Not too often, because Meredith is suspicious of even her own people these days, limiting their movement and watching closely, listening for signs of corruption or treason.

But she cannot deny her men the right to pray. The mages, yes, but not the templars. Not yet.

Hawke knows that he'll be debriefed when he gets back to his post, that they may even be using him to feed her only the information that Meredith wants her to have.

But it's still _Carver_. He asked her to trust him, and she does.

They exchange few words, but just the fact that they can still talk _at all_ is important. It proves there's still _some hope_, a reminder that other people do see how close the city is to crumbling completely. And they want to help, to find a way to fix it. Not _just_ Carver, not even just him inside the templars. Anders talks to Cullen, and Thrask. They still play their little games, though they grow more dangerous with every passing day.

Attempts to break mages out of the Gallows now fail more often than they succeed. And failure nearly always results in death. Mages who commit suicide rather than letting themselves be taken back. Public executions to much fanfare in the streets, a miniature festival celebrating the death of a dangerous criminal. Hanging days are looked forward to because restrictions on food are slackened. Kids can make a good deal of money picking pockets and hawking crumbs among the crowds come to witness the dispensation of justice.

If they're _lucky_, a failed escape still means a chance to try again, for the mages who cannot be proven as _maleficarum _after torturous interrogation, brutal punishment, and containment in a solitary cell far worse than the one Anders remembers. In the Gallows, very few of the mages isolated in the dungeons ever come out, even with their too-small number of rebellious templars trying to make things better.

Even outside of the Gallows, there are people opening their eyes, starting to see that things are getting _worse_, that they are not supposed to be this way.

Nobles call for a new Viscount, _years_ after Meredith has stepped in to fill that empty seat. The Knight Commander will burn their city to the ground if they don't stop it, but it's not too late yet. There is _still_ the possibility of compromise.


	36. Lost Causes

Several mages escape from the Gallows, _confirmed_ maleficarum that take out several templars in cold blood as they flee. Thrask is one of their victims.

The criminals are quickly recaptured and executed, without fanfare or ceremony. It seems that Meredith has little desire to let the common people know just how easy it was for such a mass breakout to occur. Anders seethes because it only seems to confirm what he's known for too long: the only chance at success comes when desperate mages resort to wielding death as a weapon, proving the Knight Commander's paranoid measures _right_.

The Ferelden Circle rebelled, but it did so at a _terrible_ cost. He has _every reason_ to hate that prison he'd once called home, but still, something had died in him at the realization of what happened there. The place where children had once been allowed to play grew haunted by death and darkness, fear and anger. It had _never_ been a happy place, but in Uldred's wake, Kinloch Hold becomes ever more like the Gallows. They experimented with leniency (he hates to admit it, but he's _proof_. They threw him in a dungeon cell when they should've killed him). Their experiment failed. The Circle spins.

The Underground, barely holding together already, now seems to crumble before his eyes.

The apostates of the former Starkhaven Circle that had given him such hope have been scattered now, nearly all recaptured and most of those executed. Any that remain free do not make contact with the struggling secret revolution.

Carver does not show up in the Chantry, for days that turn into a week, then two. His smuggled messages stop.

The Champion is still given freedom to roam in the city, can approach the Gallows to speak to the templars at will. When she does so, it is Cullen who tells her, in strangled whispers that sound like code, that her brother is being investigated. Not officially, and he tells her not to worry. He is confined to his quarters, _not_ a cell. No one will touch him.

But they all know the game that is being played here. Meredith is holding Carver ransom. One move, one word, and the last remaining children of the Hawke _both_ can be killed, captured or tortured or... whatever she wants. She holds them in her hand.

Anders rarely leaves the shelter of his clinic anymore. He certainly doesn't come to the Gallows, and Hawke knows he'd pitch a fit if he knew _she_ was here. She won't drag him here, into danger, but she feels unbearably alone in the shadows of the twisted statues a high stone walls, and iron bars. She misses _him_. She feels safer when he's close, at her back. A long time ago she thought she'd never need anyone else to protect her.

She takes in a deep breath and steels her nerves and marches into the heart of darkness. This city thinks she's a hero? She can handle one conversation with the Knight Commander, surely.

Meredith studies her with ice cold eyes, and Hawke _barely_ manages to hold her gaze. She _feels_ weaker here, for one thing. There are too many walls and wards, all around, breaking the natural flow of mana. And the Knight Commander wields power as her weapon, the entire _city_ is terrified of her. The woman never lets go of her sword, and Hawke knows that she could throw out a Holy Smite almost as easily as breathing. This is _her_ ground, and she knows it.

"What brings you here, Champion?" the woman asks, with a false cordiality that makes Hawke _nervous_. To her, it sounds like a threat.

_Five minutes_ in this prison and she already knows she'd commit suicide rather than stay here. Except that somewhere in these cavernous halls are _children_, who have known no other home but this one. And Carver's here.

"The Knight Captain told me you've got my brother locked up," she says, forcing her voice to be steady and calm.

Meredith heaves a dramatic sigh. "The Knight Captain ought to know when to keep his mouth shut. He's got a soft spot for you, Champion. Your brother as well. It seems some trace of the mage _sympathizer_ from Ferelden remains after all." She smiles, that same cruel imitation of a grin that shows no softness. Hawke wonders if Meredith is _ever_ actually happy. Maybe when she's torturing mages.

Hawke knows how to keep secrets. She's been doing it for her entire life, after all. Meredith must not _know_ for sure what Carver and Cullen have gotten up to. If she had proof, they'd be _dead_.

The Knight Commander is waiting for her to slip, to give her _just enough_ evidence against Carver that she can make up the rest.

Hawke gives her nothing.

The woman thanks her for cooperating with the lawful authority of Kirkwall, for assistance to the Chantry, for her help in maintaining _control_ in the city, and she feels _sick_ inside, but she agrees to help track down the last of the renegade escapees, a young man of dubious intelligence and little skill who had nevertheless been smart enough to recognize an opportunity when he saw one.

She _has to_, because to do anything other than _obey_ gives Meredith all the ammunition she needs.

She walks out of the Gallows, the only mage in the city who can, but the shadows of those bars follow her.

She tracks down the runaway, making himself way too obvious in the Hanged Man, even with Varric and Isabela doing what they could to deflect attention from him. Apparently the pirate even threw him a pity fuck.

He's spent his entire life, _decades_, in the Gallows but somehow retained the obnoxious accent of his Orlesian noble family. And he's pathetic and disgusting and the type of guy she'd normally be the first in line to punch, or stab a little. But if his pick-up lines are awful, he does an even worse job of hiding his terror when she tells him she's one of Meredith's hunters. They both know what awaits him if he's sent back. The kid wouldn't last half a day in a dungeon cell. The templars won't care.

Hawke tells him to get lost, that this is his one chance, she'll pretend she never saw him. But she doesn't feel any better after she sends him on his way. He doesn't stand a _chance_. Everybody gets caught. Even her. She does what the templars tell her to do because she's afraid of the punishment if she doesn't. No wonder the boy squandered his freedom getting drunk, she thinks, as she downs another glass of ale. She does the same damned thing, because if they can still hope for anything it's that enough alcohol might kill the fear enough to feel something. Or it'll kill feeling altogether. That works too.

That night, she crawls into the clinic cot Anders is dozing on. She hasn't been here in _days_. The moonlight casts weird shadows, the place feels different, wrong. She realizes that there are no candles lit, and wonders why. This place _shouldn't_ be dark. There has to be _one place_ in the city that isn't dark.

Her movement wakes him, of course it does, and she feels guilty but she's glad. There's no way she could make a space for herself on that small makeshift bed without disturbing him, but she can't sleep alone in her huge empty house, not tonight.

"Anders," she whispers, half-crying. "I need your help."

They're both awake now, they won't be sleeping any more tonight, but he holds her and listens to her spill everything she's been doing without telling him because she didn't want him to worry, or be mad at her. Her fear doesn't go away but it feels a little better, _safer_ with his arms around her, his soothing whispers as he wipes away her tears.

"I don't know why I'm telling you this," she admits.

Because what can _he_ do that she can't? Their war is already lost, he's said it too.

He tells her he'll find a way. He's come too far to give up on freedom, or on her.

He asks her if she trusts him.

Of course she does.


	37. Martyr

Anders knows two things.

The first thing he knows is that he is good at keeping secrets. Most people are _really _bad at keeping secrets. When they make plans, their demeanor changes. They get excited, or unusually thoughtful, they forget to do the things they normally do. People notice, and that's about the time that _most people_ can't keep a lid on whatever it is they're trying to hide. Anders is really, _really_ good at making plans and keeping them hidden, so nobody ever notices.

All Hawke has noticed is that he seems tired, and that he spends most of his time down at the clinic these days, instead of with her.

He doesn't feel bad about keeping secrets from her, because he _needs _her to be safe, and the second thing he knows is that _he gets hurt_, and people who try to get close to him get hurt _because_ of him. He told her that in the _very beginning_, but she didn't believe him.

He watches her, lingering a few steps behind as they wander the meandering streets up to Hightown in this earliest of morning hours. It's just the two of them, and he can _almost_ pretend that if they don't really look, she won't see the crushing devastation of Kirkwall. She doesn't deserve that. She deserves sunrise, not the war that is coming.

It's not the first time she's been asked to a meeting at the Chantry, nor even the first time she's served as a mediator (though ultimately a powerless one) between the Knight Commander and the First Enchanter. He's stood by her side as she _begged _the Grand Cleric to help before the city collapsed in the wake of their paralyzed _inaction_, and all she got in reply was a trite and meaningless suggestion to pray and trust in the Maker's will.

Anders realizes it's been a _long time_ since he's prayed for anything. The Tevinter amulet Hawke gave him still rests against his chest, warm from the layers of clothing hiding it there. It's the closest thing to a religious icon he has these days, but he doesn't believe in it. Echoes of the Chant he'd memorized alone in a cell spill into his mind without effort or desire.

_It's not too late_, the voice in his head whispers. He's no stranger to hearing voices either. He's fought off temptation and doubt and fear, and made a decision. This one is his last one. There's no coming back from this.

_It's not too late._

But if he does nothing now, then _nothing_ will be done. Nothing will ever change.

Hawke squeezes his hand, and he squeezes back.

She's on her guard, nervous. She _knows,_ somehow, that something bad is coming. They all do. At the Hanged Man, Isabela has been unusually quiet while Varric researches how good stories end. They end with the hero dying, of course, and somehow, Anders accepts that. He thinks dying might be okay, a kind of relief. Because he asked Hawke to trust him even as he knows he'll break her heart. She'll _blame him_ for not telling her, she'll blame him for making things worse. But that's okay. He'd rather hurt her feelings than watch the templars hurt her.

She asked for help, and the only thing he's capable of doing is breaking all the rules.

He'll fight back with all the anger he's kept bottled up inside for _decades_, because he made a promise.

One day... ten years from now, a hundred... someone like him can love someone like her, and there will be no templars to tear them apart.

He never _planned_ to start a revolution, but he knows what it feels like to be helpless. He's watched too many people get hurt because of him.

Jowan never got in trouble in the Circle until he came along and dragged him behind through stupid pranks, never thinking about the consequences. He didn't care about the punishments, he never had, but it didn't make the beatings hurt any less and Jowan _did _care.

Melly made her own choices, but when it mattered she made the choice to try to protect _him_, and it _hurt her_, more than he wants to think about.

Karl was the only one in the mage quarters who gave a damn about him after he was Harrowed and no longer welcome among the apprentices. While the others ignored him, Karl taught him what it meant to be an adult, comforted him when he woke from the constant nightmares, _listened_ to him. Karl showed him that not every touch in the darkness brought pain, that sex didn't have to be only a game or a meaningless distraction. Karl _took care of him_ in a way that no one else ever had. Karl meant that he wasn't _alone_. He didn't have to kill his feelings because he was afraid of them, the way he did with Melly. It still wasn't _love_, but it made him _happy_, for a while. And then Karl was sent away, he thought he'd never see him again and he _knows now_ that it would have been better if he hadn't.

Anders remembers all these people, all these moments, with a sharp clarity that _still _hurts.

He remembers almost nothing about his home and family, but he remembers the little sister who tried to fight off the templars for him. They hurt her too. They dragged him away as she lay bleeding, disturbingly still. And they hurt him when he protested, fighting against them, trying to get back to her. A punch to the stomach when he tried to wriggle out of their grasp, a slap across the face if he made too much noise. Before he ever got to Kinloch Hold, he learned to stay quiet.

Oh, he spit and cursed in their faces often enough, teased and joked and put on a good show in front of the other apprentices. But those outbursts weren't free. They brought pain too. Even when he got away without punishment, his constant antagonizing of the templars meant plenty were willing to look the other way once he inevitably wound up in the dungeons. They all got their petty revenge, sooner or later.

And he sees it happening again, to the children of the Gallows. There are some he was able to help, like Kaden, but there are so many more that he can't get to.

He knows what fear looks like, and he sees it in Hawke, worse every day. She's a runner, like he is, but she can feel the walls closing in just as well as he can. They _all_ feel it. It's more than mages and templars now, this war that he's been fighting since the first time they tried to lock him up is escalating, bleeding out into the darkness of the Kirkwall streets like a poison. The children of refugees huddle in his clinic and they all hear the screams in the night, when the templar patrols sweep through.

On those nights, he pulls Hawke close and won't let go of her. He _won't _let them hurt her.

He made a _promise_.

_Nobody else gets hurt._

He's so _sick_ of the lies, the walls and the darkness that hide unspeakable terrors.

On the shiny smooth stones of a Hightown courtyard, the Knight Commander bullies the First Enchanter, and Orsino cowers and gives in with talk of compromise.

Compromise means children are torn from their homes and locked in a prison, while their parents are crushed by the Chantry's insistence that they've given birth to abominations.

Compromise brought him _years_ of torture instead of execution, so that the Chantry's lapdogs could celebrate their own holiness, insisting that they're not above showing _mercy_.

If they were _smart_, if they had their way, they'd just kill every mage they discover, instead of this slow genocide they preside over. But they're _scared_, they know that there is a huge difference between telling a mother that her son or daughter is dead to them, and slaughtering the crying toddler in her arms. They need people to believe the lie, to ignore the pain and the fear bleeding out from behind the walls.

"_There is no compromise_," Anders insists.

Behind them, the Chantry looms, the morning light throwing its long shadow over all of them. But it's just a building, fragile stone, built by human hands.

One simple push is all it takes, and the symbol of the Maker's power, built to last forever, explodes in the radiant light of pure destructive energy.

He watches it burn, and lets the shockwave and the sound wash over him. Angry shouts and violent threats and accusations are meaningless to him now, something else he's too familiar with.

He isn't afraid of anything anymore.


	38. Savior

The city is on fire. Again.

Closer. Brighter. Hotter.

It seems destruction follows her no matter where she goes, whatever she does.

It's all confused chaos, anger forged into a weapon, aimed at _her_, but one voice cuts through all the others.

"I invoke the Rite of Annulment! _Every mage_ in the Circle will be executed, immediately!"

Maybe it's Hawke's imagination, but she swears she can hear a hint of _glee_ in the Knight Commander's voice.

It's what she wanted all along, after all.

And Anders has just _handed her_ the excuse she needed.

Hawke glances from the burning Chantry, broken and continuously consumed by magical flame, to Anders. He is huddled on a nearby crate, haunted by the screams of the children dying because of his decision.

He is broken too.

"The Circle didn't even _do_ this!" Orsino protests.

_But you would have if you could_, Hawke thinks. _Wouldn't you?_

She walks over to Anders, lit only by flames.

He'd asked her to trust him, and she did.

"I am the cause of mage freedom now," he'd told her, in one of his moments of sweeping intensity, _determined _to channel his pain into some kind of action, to break through the walls of the inescapable cage he'd spent his whole life trying to flee. At moments like those, like _this_, he turns into something more than just one man. He'd _never_ cared about himself.

_He_ doesn't care about himself, but she does. She cares about him, she has from the start, from the first time she stumbled into his clinic, alone in a strange city, but so was he.

She sees _him_, when everyone else only sees the _symbol_, the target, the terrorist and the revolutionary.

She takes his hand, he flinches away. But she won't let go.

_Not you_, she thinks. _We_.

_We_ _are the symbol, the revolution._

She watches flames leap from the collapsing wreckage of a holy place, and knows: _We did this._

He didn't tell her, but she knew.

He thought he could protect her but she didn't need protection. He thought he could absorb the pain of a whole _world's_ war on his own, but nobody can do that, and he doesn't have to.

She won't let him.

"Fight with me," she tells him.

"I... didn't think you'd let me," he says softly.

He still won't look at her.

_I didn't think you'd want me_, is what she hears.

"I need you," she reminds him. "I can't abandon you now. I won't."

He curls away from her, huddling into a smaller ball, as if he's trying to make himself invisible as he sits on his crate. His eyes flicker back to the crowd of acquaintances and enemies that have somehow attached themselves to his life despite his attempts not to connect to anyone through these years in Kirkwall.

Despite their rage and yelling, both the Knight Commander and the First Enchanter are ignoring him.

Hawke doesn't know why she should be surprised by this. They ignore _everything_ except their own stupid pointless fights, it's what brought them here in the first place.

"Anders," she says softly. _"Please_. You..." she swallows hard, and listens to the crackling of the consuming fire, the cries and desperate begging of the people trapped. And _nobody_ is helping, they're all standing around trying to lay _blame_, ready to take vengeance, to spread even more death while the fire still burns. "You started this," she tells him. "Help me finish it now. The mages will need us to fight for them. Help me protect them. Help me save them."

_Help me save __you__._

He wants her to be mad at him. She thinks she _should _be, but she isn't.

She doesn't feel much of anything beyond an empty ache.

He shakes his head, offers half-hearted protests, and it's all too obvious that he's crying. Tears spill that he doesn't acknowledge. She resists the urge to brush them away, the way she would in the middle of the night.

"I _can't_," he tells her hoarsely.

He broke the rules, and he expects to be punished for it.

He's waiting for her to walk away, to abandon him to pain and darkness with some meaningless apology. He wants her to leave him to suffer and tell him he deserves it.

He expects to die, he's expected it for _years_, since before she ever met him.

He's crossed a line, and he knows it.

He's fought before, lashed out with angry words and even vengeful spells channeled against men who tried to hurt him first. He's even killed before.

But this is different. This is entirely new.

He is a _healer_, but he made the premeditated decision to attack innocent people in the one place of established sanctuary that exists in the world, even if the peace the church provided was fragile and kept out of reach for too many.

He broke _his own_ rules.

"I won't make you, Anders," she tells him, as she starts to walk away. She won't _force_ him to do anything. He's had too many people try to control him in his life and she won't be one of them. She's pretty sure she wouldn't be able to make him do anything he doesn't want to do, anyway. Nobody else ever could. "But I won't leave you here. If you're going to let somebody kill you, they're going to have to kill me too."

His eyes flicker up to hers, for the first time, so dark and full of pain that she stops breathing.

"You do it," he tells her. "If I'm going to die, I want it to be you."

"No way," she snaps. "_Never_."

She watches as the Knight Commander begins to herd her templars toward the Gallows. It's only the two of them now, left alone here among the burning fires, left to make a decision.

"She's going to kill all the mages," Hawke reminds Anders softly. "_All of them_. If you and I die here, without even _trying_... then all of this was meaningless. Is that what you want?"

Anders draws in a shaky breath, and slowly shakes his head.

"I can fight better scared than they can angry," Hawke tells him. "So can you."

He gives her the tiniest nod, agreement, a sign of _life_.

He hasn't given up yet. He never will.

She knows him too well to have ever thought he would.

She pulls him to his feet and they race to the Gallows, to fight side by side against the entire world.


	39. The Beginning of Something New

This war has been brewing for a long, long time.

For years, since Anders blindly chose a ship fleeing Ferelden and landed in the shadows of Kirkwall's Gallows.

For _decades_, since they pulled him from home and locked him away, punishing him for a crime he _might_ commit, trying with brutal force to break him of the idea that he or anyone like him deserved anything _close_ to the same freedom other people have.

But before he was even born, Hawke's father ran, lived in defiance of Chantry law and fell in love and got married and sired three children.

He remembers, suddenly, the robes Hawke discovered in the Deep Roads, the story of the Spiral Eye, hundreds of years old.

This war has been brewing for _thousands of years_, since the Chantry first began filling their sermons with words like "apostate" and "abomination."

But the reality that he has _started_ this war that has been brewing doesn't hit him until they approach the Gallows, through the narrow alleyways used mostly by the dockworkers. Here, the streets are almost completely dark. The early morning sun struggles to reach these low passageways. The fires burning in Hightown are a world away.

The only light comes from a nervous flickering wisp, conjured haphazardly by a terrified young girl, a mage backed into a corner by a templar who towers over her, all menacing steel.

"No!" she begs him, as he advances with sword drawn. "Please, don't! I haven't done anything wrong!"

"The law is clear, _mage!_ We cannot take the risk."

The light dies suddenly as her power snaps out, washed away by the overwhelming surge of a Holy Smite.

She collapses to her knees, and Anders feels the familiar buzzing tension in his head. His breathing quickens, his mind _screaming_ a thousand useless warnings as he freezes.

The templar stabs the girl through the chest in one quick motion, and ignores her final fragile heartbeats, her last hiccuping attempts to cling to life.

Before she's stopped moving, he whirls on Anders, and Hawke, who tosses out a defiant challenge even though she can't have any mana to draw upon either, but the templar takes a few stalking steps toward her.

"Champion," he sneers.

Even helmeted, it's clear in his stance, the dancing ease of his steps, that _he'll kill her_, and take pleasure in it.

"_Stay away from her_," Anders growls, and the templar falls to the ground, with a thump. And a crossbow bolt punched through his armored chest.

Anders spins, and Varric shrugs, a teasing smirk flickering just briefly across his face, despite the overwhelming seriousness of _this_.

"You know Bianca just can't resist a good show of chivalry, Blondie. Hope you don't mind us lending you a hand."

Anders nods, his breathing still shaky, the fog of the templar's Smite now fading after his death.

He grabs Hawke's hand and won't let go.

"Y'all right there, Hawke?" Varric asks.

"Never better," she insists.

But Anders notices the way her gaze lingers for long moments on the body of the mage girl killed in front of their eyes. Another innocent victim. There are too many who will die today, and it's _all his fault_.

"Come on," Hawke finally says softly. "We need to keep moving."

It only gets worse once they get inside the prison. He wonders at the _lack_ of templar presence. Where _is _everybody? The place seems empty, except for the bodies of those cut down as they tried to fight the inevitable, templar and mage alike.

Orsino greets them in the main Courtyard, the first place they've been that the sunlight can touch, yet here it only seems to exaggerate the shadows of the grisly statues of tormented slaves twisted in agony. Installed by the Tevinters to inspire more hatred and fear. Anders can't help looking at them. He wonders why they've been allowed to stand when the Chantry's done its best to erase all memory of the Tevinter Imperium everywhere they can.

_Because it proves their point, doesn't it? __That's_ _what __mages_ _do._

With those disturbing sentinels standing witness, Orsino struggles valiantly to rally what few mages haven't already fled, but it's clear his hopeful words are a hollow lie, given away by the grim cast of his features. It's clear in his eyes that he's given up already. He's heard the templars' words for too many years, fought fruitlessly against the Knight Commander's accusations until they beat him down. He believes them now. They tell him he deserves to die, and he _believes_ it.

And the thing is, Anders understands.

But the mages left here now are mostly the youngest ones. They hide behind the elf and peek out now and again, to catch a glimpse of the Champion who has come to save them. And they _don't_ deserve to die. They _haven't_ done anything wrong.

So when the Knight Commander sweeps into the courtyard with all the templars he'd been looking for trailing behind her, all full of menacing righteousness, he steps out to meet her. He'll accept their vengeful punishment if it means shielding the little kids. He'll get hurt so they don't have to. He's a little predictable that way.

He expects to do it alone, is the thing.

But Varric and _Isabela_, who doesn't sacrifice herself for _anything_, are at his side.

Merrill stands ready, though she'd spent years telling him that the plight of the Circle mages was of no concern to her.

Aveline, who _married a templar_ and swore an oath to follow lawfully-given orders, hesitates for only the briefest of moments before she glances back at the cowering children and nods, settling in with sword and shield to protect the innocent.

Even _Fenris_ shares a brief look of understanding and joins him to fight. For _mages_. They share only a few heartbeats of awkward silence, but Anders knows they're both thinking about the few rare conversations they'd had, usually when they were both _very_ drunk, and the familar scars he'd seen when healing the elven warrior. It appears they're not enemies after all.

Hawke settles in, closest to him, close enough to touch, and he is nearly overwhelmed by his desire to protect _her_ too, he doesn't want her to fight, he can't stand the thought of her getting hurt. But he knows she needs to be here as much as anybody, so he simply meets her eyes and says the only thing he can think to say: "I love you."

The first time he's said it out loud.

He won't let it be the last time.

Hawke gives his hand a brief squeeze before she turns back to face the Knight Commander. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't have to.

"Champion," Meredith calls her, but somehow she makes the title sound like an accusation. "You were never part of this Circle, and I _tolerated _that, but in defending them you've chosen to share their fate."

"This is _not_ what the Order stands for!" Cullen snaps, all steely determination.

A smile plays on Anders' face as he shares the briefest of glances with the Knight Captain. Even now that they've both grown up, this strange ally of his somehow still finds it easy to find the right thing to do.

"I want them _dead_!" Meredith screeches. "All of them! They are traitors and abominations!"

Cullen draws his sword on his commanding officer. Not attacking, not yet, but it's clear where he stands.

"You'll have to go through me," announces Carver, stepping out from behind Cullen. Hawke's annoyingly bitter kid brother has apparently learned all the right lessons from all those people he'd insisted were holding him down.

"_Fine_," Meredith growls. "I have done nothing but perform my _duty_. And I will _continue_ to protect this city! Alone, if I have to!"

"We will not let you kill us all without a fight!" Orsino demands, and in this last moment Anders can understand how he became the leader of this Circle in the first place. He'd accused the First Enchanter of bowing to the templars, but Orsino stands tall and calls forth all the primal power he can gather to him, feeding off of the mana of the other mages in close proximity, using it to support him. He acts before the templars can _react_, sweeping several of them off their feet with a blast of invisible force.

Merrill jumps into the fray with her Dalish-learned spells, lightning and earth responding to her call, paralyzing and even killing templars who have never been taught to fight against power manifested in such a way.

Meredith's eyes widen, it takes her just a little bit too long to respond. Even now, she seems _shocked _by the idea that anyone, especially a _mage_, would _dare_ attack her.

It makes Anders want to laugh. He feels giddy with the rush of mana flowing through him, as he launches spell after spell against the templars so quickly that they cannot think to drain him or weave a ward. Their shields and armor are mere metal, crumbling easily under the onslaught of his raw power. Why was he _ever _afraid of them?

Hawke works with him, timing her spells with his for maximum effect. Her mana reinforces his, and he can feel her pulling it back from him when she begins to weaken. It seems _effortless_, this dance. Their next moves _flow_ without conscious effort.

In the heart of the courtyard, Orsino continues to channel his power, aiming to hold Meredith's attention to distract her from the young children, to buy them time to flee.

The Knight Commander's narrowed eyes glint with the feral light of his conjured fire as she meets him with a grim smile. Against her sword, heavy and sharp, he is just a man. All his power means nothing in the end. He weakens, pulling desperately for the mana he's drained launching his bright offensive, coming up empty even with the other mages trying to offer support. The other warriors who might have shielded him are all engaged in their own furious battles. When Meredith is able to get close, he is easy to kill.

She slices him down, but Anders notices something that he's willing to bet no one else catches. She pauses, just briefly, hesitates at the sight of Orsino's crumpled body, still spilling his life-blood onto the paving stones. And she whispers a prayer. Anders finds himself repeating the words.

"Blessed are those who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter."

They share the same words, the same desperate calls to the Maker that they _both believe_ created _both _of them, as they stand here ready to kill each other, because they've lost all their other choices.

What does that _mean?_

Meredith collapses only moments later, _exhausted _in the way that only battle can make a person, her armor dented and damaged, some parts ripped off completely and other bits peppered with arrows and crossbow bolts . She staggers, bleeding from countless sharp cuts of swords and daggers, bruised, scorched by fire and lightning.

The healer in him knows that she's already dead. There's no surviving the kinds of wounds she's taken.

She doesn't look powerful anymore, or scary. She just looks like the kind of woman who might have been somebody's mother in some different life. Her blue eyes are surprisingly clear, like deep water. The ice-cold hatred he'd always seen there is gone now.

And then those eyes slip closed.

Cullen kneels by her side with quiet reverence. "May the Maker judge her justly, as He will judge us all."

Anders finds himself mumbling in agreement. For once, the idea of judgement doesn't sound like a threat. He finds himself _believing_ again, praying to a Maker who sees through the confusion and weakness of mortal life to what they were _trying_ for.

"Go," Cullen tells him softly. "Get out of here while you can."

Anders nods. "Take care of the kids," he pleads.

"Anders, you know I will."

Of course he will.

Cullen has always been a good man, the one templar Anders never thinks of as such. He's just a _friend_, the shy sixteen-year-old who listened with breathless awe to stories of freedom and tried to distract an immature apostate from the agony of the punishments everybody else including most of the _mages_ told him he deserved. It won't be with elfroot and alcohol in the darkness of a dungeon cell, but Anders trusts Cullen to heal these kids too, in whatever way he can.

A few feet away, Hawke has her arms wrapped around her brother in a tight hug, until Carver pushes her away.

Anders is there to catch her, he won't let her feel lost or alone even for a _second_.

He guides her to the open water lapping against the dark stones of the prison island, where Isabela's ship waits to carry them to the beginning of something new.


	40. Epilogue: Stay With Me Tonight

He holds her close against his body, trying to ignore the scratchiness of the straw poking out of the old inn's worn mattress.

It could be worse.

They've been in _plenty_ of worse places.

They escaped Kirkwall, but it meant being thrown into the claustrophobic darkness of a ship's hold in a storm, where he'd been unable to do anything more than remind himself how to breathe, as Hawke held his hand and whispered whatever babbling nonsense came into her head, but he didn't care because he wasn't really _listening_ to what she _said_, he just needed _her_. Her presence, her tireless, patient reminders that he _isn't alone anymore_, that she's with him now, that as long as that's true he knows for sure that this isn't the dungeons.

They've spent nights out in the rain with only the thin canvas of a tent or the bare limbs of trees between them and the open sky, shivering and miserable. Those nights reminded her of treks at the edges of the Wilds with her father. She shows him things she'd forgotten she knew: trail signs, animal tracks, new kinds of edible plants that he's certain he'd never seen before. He's picked up what he could since leaving the Circle for good all these years ago, but they were mostly hasty lessons absolutely necessary for survival, gleaned by watching his fellow Wardens and trying not to make it obvious just how clueless he actually was.

They've slept in barns and haylofts and hidden among barrels in carts, with canvas or wool pulled tight over their heads. They steal what food they need, oft as not, and if they manage to gather a bit of coin here or there, it disappears quickly. Rooms are cheap, it's silence that they need to buy.

Villagers watch them with suspicious eyes, though they steer clear of coming anywhere _near_ a place where someone may recognize them.

The Champion of Kirkwall stirs in his arms, and his heart clenches with guilt as he notices her shivering. He shifts out from under his old familiar feathered coat and drapes it over her. She doesn't deserve this. She'd had money, and a title, a big beautiful _home_. She had respect and _safety_ and she lost it all because of _him_.

"Don't be stupid," she mumbles.

His fingers tighten around hers. "I didn't say anything," he protests softly.

"I know what you were thinking."

Well, maybe she does. He thinks it often enough.

"I don't _want_ safety, Anders," Hawke insists. "I want _you_."

_"Why?" _he asks, his voice breaking in spite of all the effort he puts into pretending otherwise.

He's never asked before. He's been so afraid of the answer.

No one _wants_ him. No one ever has.

"Because you make me feel safe," is her quiet, breathless reply.

It doesn't matter that she's never stopped running, it doesn't matter that he's always looking over his shoulder for the templars that have spent a lifetime hunting him down.

War is setting the world on fire, splitting it apart at the seams. Everything is broken.

She still dreams of her father's death, he still wakes up sweating, certain that nothing awaits him but cold shackles and fiery pain.

They make no plans for any future. Apostates never can.

They just cling to each other in the night, creating home in one another's arms.


End file.
